World’s first dark matter detection system launched

Physicists have created a system that will enhance the ability to hunt for dark matter

Physicists from the University of Bristol have created a detection system that will enhance the Large Haldron Collider’s ability to hunt for dark matter and extra dimensions.

The system, installed on the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment, is being used for the first time anywhere in the world and researchers say it will be able to enhance the understanding of the fundamental physics of the universe.

The detector pulls together all the data produced in the microsecond after each particle collision of the Large Haldron Collider. The detector then studies the data needed for understanding a wide range of physics, searching for extra dimensions and for the particles that could make up dark matter.  

Data from the CMS detector must be analysed in less than a millionth of a second to decide whether something interesting has happened and that the data should be kept for further analysis. 

Dr Jim Brooke, senior research associate in the School of Physics at the University of Bristol, said: "The system effectively receives a digital image of each collision from the detector. This upgrade is like switching to HDTV, the pictures are much higher resolution. We can also process an entire image in one chip; before we had to split them up and process each piece separately."  

Dr Alex Tapper from Imperial College London leads the group that was involved in developing the custom electronics boards for the new trigger, added: "Normal PCs are just not fast enough to perform this analysis of the data so we developed a custom processor ourselves. We used a cutting edge chip which is very good at performing many calculations in parallel and built a system using optical fibres to feed enormous amounts of data into the chip. The new system is much more powerful and we hope it will help us make new discoveries in the future."