Hubbry Logo
search
logo
1940073

Intersecting Storage Rings

logo
Community Hub0 Subscribers
Write something...
Be the first to start a discussion here.
Be the first to start a discussion here.
See all
Intersecting Storage Rings

The ISR (standing for "Intersecting Storage Rings") was a particle accelerator at CERN. It was the world's first hadron collider, and ran from 1971 to 1984, with a maximum center of mass energy of 62 GeV. From its initial startup, the collider itself had the capability to produce particles like the J/ψ and the upsilon, as well as observable jet structure; however, the particle detector experiments were not configured to observe events with large momentum transverse to the beamline, leaving these discoveries to be made at other experiments in the mid-1970s. Nevertheless, the construction of the ISR involved many advances in accelerator physics, including the first use of stochastic cooling, and it held the record for luminosity at a hadron collider until surpassed by the Tevatron in 2004.

The ISR was proposed in 1964 for conducting the head-on proton-proton collisions at a beam energy of 28 GeV; to the study of the new particles created in such collisions.  The project was approved within a year.

The idea of colliding beams was first conceived by a group at Midwestern Universities Research Association (MURA) in the United States, as a way to have collisions at an increased center of mass energy. The MURA group also invented radiofrequency (RF) stacking technique to accumulate the proton beams of sufficient intensity. CERN Council looked into this novel idea in 1957, and an Accelerator Research (AR) group was established to look into the possibilities of having such a facility. AR studied the two-way fixed-field alternating gradient (FFAG) accelerator for plasma acceleration and for an electron collider. In 1960 when the construction of the Proton Synchrotron was completed, the AR group focussed on a proton-proton collider. To check the feasibility and yield of the RF stacking method, the CERN Electron Storage and Accumulation Ring (CESAR) on a smaller scale compared to ISR, was proposed in 1960 and successfully tested by 1964; followed by the official proposal of ISR in the same year, when the AR group presented the technical design report.

In 1971 itself, detectors were set up by 12 experimental teams at five intersecting points of ISR.

The combination of the CERN Proton Synchrotron (CPS) and ISR also enabled the study of collisions using particles other than the proton, such as the deuteron, alpha particles, and antiprotons.

The initial goal and motivation for ISR was the following.

During the end stages of ISR, the beam energies were hiked up to a maximum value of 31.4 GeV.

The accelerator was made up of two magnetic rings (located in France), each with a circumference of 942m. The rings interlaced together such that they would meet at eight intersecting regions for colliding proton beams. The 28 GeV proton beams would come from the CERN Proton Synchrotron (CPS) located about 200 meters away (In Switzerland)

See all
User Avatar
No comments yet.