Last month the CMS Collaboration gathered at CERN for the CMS Upgrade Days: three full days focused on the evolution of our detector in preparation for the High-Luminosity era at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). For those who don’t know, High-Luminosity is an upgrade of the LHC, due after 2029, that will enable CMS and other experiments to enlarge their data sample by a factor of ten compared with the baseline programme. This means CMS will need to be ready to cope with the huge increase in data promised by the upgrades.
Therefore, CMS needs to plan its upgrades in great detail. This is not an easy task considering the sheer size and complexity of our colourful detector. Everything must be considered, from the beating heart, the tracker, to the outer muon chambers, passing by the brand new calorimeters that measure the energy of particles, the ultra-precise luminosity detector, the new cooling system and so on. The upgrade program includes basically everything a researcher in particle physics could desire to work on and now is the best time to do it. Luckily, CMS Collaboration can count on more than 240 member institutes from all around the world to work on the upgrades together.
There are amazing days ahead for those who want to be part of the upgrade program! For this reason, the CMS Upgrade Days aimed to give CMS scientists an overview of the current status of the “What next?” plan. The event organisation allowed for both in-person and remote attendance but, to be completely honest, those who were connecting missed something special. Indeed, besides all key meetings being accessible remotely, the program included much more. Let’s take a look more in detail.
The new generation of CMS scientists captured the attention of all the attendees by presenting up to 58 posters about new detector components. It was wonderful to see them discussing and bonding during the poster sessions on the second day of the event. Overall, three winners and three runners-up have been selected by the jury and awarded for the best posters.
#1 Claudio Quaranta & Patrizia Barria, INFN Roma
#2 Piyush Kumar, University of Hyderabad
#3 Milos Vojinovic, Imperial College
Runner up :
#1 Michael Grippo, INFN Torino and the University of Torino
#2 Geliang Liu, LLR, Ecole Polytech, UN2P3-CNRS
#3 Simona Palluotto, INFN Milano-Bicocca
Furthermore, three brave and skilled participants accepted the “Last minute!” challenge of presenting their poster in one minute! Watch the video!
After being inspired by all the presentations setting out the future of CMS, it was then time to actually see the detector parts we were talking about!
Divided into smaller groups, all attendees were guided through the CMS laboratories at CERN where some of the devices mentioned during the meetings are actually being assembled and tested. This was another great way to learn about the projects other collaborators and friends are working on and to actually see, for the first time, the next steps the whole Collaboration is intensively aiming for.
What was missing from all of this? The bigger picture: visiting the CMS detector and falling in love with it once and for all!
It may sound strange but if you consider the size of the CMS collaboration, more than 5000 active people and counting, it is not surprising that many new members had never been able to actually see the CMS detector in real life. Understandable, yes, but something that needed to be fixed ASAP! That’s why the Upgrade Days’ grand finale was the underground visit to the CMS detector, temporarily open in all its beauty for the short winter stop of the operations. What luck! Mmm or was this all part of the plan?
You can watch some of the “visiting CMS for the first time” reactions, here: https://youtube.com/shorts/XVAJSWiU4Pk?feature=share
So there you go, another excellent example of how we like a job well done at CMS, and how when we bring people together we can dream even bigger than before! We cannot wait to have more events like this, and are excited to see the upgrades gradually come to life.
Disclaimer: The views expressed in CMS blogs are personal views of the author and do not necessarily represent official views of the CMS collaboration.