CERN

The European Laboratory for Particle Physics (CERN) is located just outside Geneva, Switzerland and overlaps the border between France and Switzerland. It has a 27 kilometer circumference circular tunnel which houses the Large Electron-Positron Collider (LEP). Under development is another facility called the Large Hadron Collider which should produce proton-antiproton collisions in the energy range 10-14 TeV. This should enable it to produce a large number of top quarks and offers a chance of seeing the proposed Higgs particle.

The Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) at CERN is one of the worlds largest protron synchrotrons, reaching energies of 450 GeV.

Another major facility at CERN is the Intersecting Storage Rings (ISR), the first proton-proton collider to be put into operation (1971). It had a maximum proton energy of 31 GeV per beam.

LEP

The world's largest electron synchrotron is the Large Electron-Positron Collider (LEP) at CERN. It has a radius of about 4 km. For the electron synchrotrons, the maximum energy is limited by the losses to synchrotron radiation which increases with the fourth power of the particle energy. Since those losses are inversely proportional to the square of the orbit radius, these accelerators are made as large as possible.

A part of CERN, the Large Electron-Positron Collider (LEP) occupies a 27 kilometer circumference circular tunnel near Geneva which overlaps the Swiss-French border. It was designed to study electron-positron collisions at a center of mass energy equal to the Z⁰ mass energy, about 100 GeV.

Large Hadron Collider

The Large Hadron Collider is latest member of CERN's collection of extraordinary high-energy facilities. It will occupy a 27 kilometer circumference circular tunnel near Geneva which overlaps the Swiss-French border, the same tunnel that contains the LEP.