University of Bath joins CERN physics experiment group

3 Oct 2019 10:30 AM

Another UK institution has joined a long-running experiment group at CERN, as the University of Bath signs up to become an affiliate member of the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment.

STFC co-ordinates and manages the UK’s subscription to CERN, giving physicists and engineers from over 20 UK universities access to the experiments to investigate a range of fundamental particle physics questions.

One of the planned collaborations involving the Bath team is to investigate parts of the cooling systems that will be needed when the CMS is upgraded in 2024. Second, third and final-year Mechanical Engineering students from the University of Bath will also consider improvements to the underground CMS cavern, automated monitoring of the facility and how waste heat can be reused.

Lecturer in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Bath Dr Alexander Lunt has previously worked at CERN and will co-ordinate the new partnership. He said: “We are extremely keen to begin working closely with staff at the Compact Muon Solenoid to support them in increasing human understanding of some of the most fundamental physics.”

The Compact Muon Solenoid is one of the key parts of the Large Hadron Collider. Its work attracted worldwide interest in July 2012, when it, along with the CERN ATLAS experiment, confirmed the existence of the previously theorised Higgs Boson elementary particle.

More information is available on the University of Bath website.