Tracking particles faster at the LHC

A new trigger system will expand what ATLAS scientists can look for during high-energy collisions at the Large Hadron Collider

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For its next big performance, the Large Hadron Collider will restart in 2015 with twice its previous collision energy and a much higher rate of particle collisions per second.

Scientists have been scurrying to prepare their detectors for the new particle onslaught. As part of this preparation, a group that includes physicists from laboratories and universities in the Chicago area are designing a new system that will allow them to examine collisions faster than ever before.

When the Large Hadron Collider is running, billions of particle collisions occur every second. Of these, only a few are the kind of direct hits that scientists are looking for. These high-impact collisions convert large amounts of pure energy into mass, temporarily producing new particles such as Higgs bosons for physicists to study.

Read more: "Tracking particles faster at the LHC" – Symmetry magazine