European Organization for Nuclear Research

INTRODUCTION

The current experimental programme at CERN is summarized in this electronic version of the Grey Book. The experiments listed used one of the following machines: the Large Electron Positron Collider (LEP), the Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS), the 28 GeV Proton Synchrotron (PS), including the Antiproton Decelerator (AD) for slow antiprotons and the ISOLDE facility for short-lived ions. Five experiments have been approved for installation at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and the R&D projects aimed at developing new detector technologies and data acquisition systems for the LHC experiments are also listed.

A number of 'Recognized Experiments' are also listed. As a complement to CERN's Scientific Programme, these experiments, considered to be of importance to High Energy Physics, have been given, on a case by case basis, this recognition status by the Research Board. The groups concerned can benefit to a limited extent from CERN's infrastructure and services.

In addition, some information about experiments completed prior to 1974 is gradually being added.

The general conditions applicable to experiments performed at CERN can be consulted at

http://cern.ch/committees/GeneralConditions.pdf

The conditions for becoming a recognized experiment can be found at

http://cern.ch/recognized-experiments/

The Director-General of CERN establishes the experimental programme on the advice of the Research Board

http://cern.ch/committees/rb/welcome.html

The latter acts on recommendations made by the Experiment Committees:

            The INTC                   http://cern.ch/committees/intc/welcome.html

            The LHCC                 http://cern.ch/committees/lhcc/welcome.html

            The SPSC                   http://cern.ch/committees/spsc/welcome.html

Schematic layouts of the experimental areas and of the beam lines at the different machines can be accessed from the Grey Book home page. Each experiment, with the exception of the LEP and LHC experiments, is identified by a code denoting the machine or the experimental area, together with a serial number. Some experiments have adopted a mnemonic to facilitate their identification.

The schedules for the experiments at the accelerators can be found as follows:

            PS Fixed Target Programme:         http://cern.ch/ps-schedule

            SPS Fixed Target Programme:       http://cern.ch/sps-schedule

Each experiment (usually accompanied with one figure) is briefly described together with the list of current participants and the official collaborating institutes. The names of the scientific spokesperson and contact person, the approval date(s) and references to the relevant Committee documents are also given. The status given for each experiment (preparation/data taking/completed) and for the Research & Development projects (in progress/completed) corresponds to the current situation (updated nightly). The 'completed' status means that data-taking has finished but the analysis may still be continuing.

The information concerning experiments is maintained by the experiment secretariats in the case of the larger experiments and by the Grey Book team for the smaller experiments, using the PIE application, and is updated continually. The validity of the data is the responsibility of the Spokespersons and Contact persons for each experiment. It is a requirement that, before their names can appear in the Grey Book, participants in experiments should either be registered with the CERN Users' Office or have provided a minimum of information about them.

The Grey Book is not an official CERN document; the Minutes of the Research Board and of the Experiment Committees are the appropriate official references.

The experiments’ secretariats and the Grey Book secretariat deserve full credit for collecting and preparing the material. They should be contacted for further information, or for comments and possible corrections, at the Experiment secretariat e-mail address indicated on the experiment page.

The GS-AIS group is to be thanked for installing the Web version of the Grey Book.

Updates and corrections to the institute addresses etc. should be sent to info-greybook-institutes@cern.ch

 

Chris Onions

August 13th 2010