From the first 3.5 TeV collisions in March 2010 to the start of the first long shutdown earlier this year, the LHC has gone through three years of improving performance. The September issue of CERN Courier takes a look behind the scenes at what underpinned the successful operation of the LHC during this first long run. A reliable cryogenics system, together with robust and sophisticated systems to prevent uncontrolled losses of the huge energies stored in both the beam and the magnets, have allowed the machine to deliver plenty of collisions, leading to the long-awaited discovery of a Higgs boson. Meanwhile, results continue to pour from the LHC experiments, including the observation of an extremely rare decay in B mesons by CMS and LHCb - news that was among the highlights of the recent summer conferences.

Read the September issue here