Each student will have the possibility to participate to organised visits of the laboratory on two afternoons. We will organize the distribution of visit slots according to your arrival date and inform you during the induction session about your assigned dates.
Organized visits include:
- ATLAS Visitor Centre and Synchrocyclotron
- Antiproton Decelerator and Data Centre
Additional visits may be scheduled to SM18 and the CMS Cavern.
Would you like to organize a visit for your friends or family? Please request a guided tour.
ATLAS Visitor Centre
ATLAS is a particle physics experiment at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. The ATLAS detector is searching for new discoveries in the head-on collisions of protons of extraordinarily high energy. ATLAS will learn about the basic forces that have shaped our Universe since the beginning of time and that will determine its fate. Among the possible unknowns are extra dimensions of space, unification of fundamental forces, and evidence for dark matter candidates in the Universe. Following the discovery of the Higgs boson, further data will allow in-depth investigation of the boson’s properties and thereby of the origin of mass. At the ATLAS Visitor Centre you will experience the excitement of frontier science, learn about the explorations of the experiment through interactive exhibits, and observe the activity of the ATLAS control room through a glass wall.
Places: 24 students per visit
CERN's first accelerator: The Synchrocyclotron
The 600 MeV Synchrocyclotron (SC), built in 1957, was CERN’s first accelerator. It provided beams for CERN’s first experiments in particle and nuclear physics. In 1964, this machine started to concentrate on nuclear physics alone, leaving particle physics to the newer and more powerful Proton Synchrotron. The SC became a remarkably long-lived machine. In 1967, it started supplying beams for a dedicated radioactive-ion-beam facility called ISOLDE, which still carries out research ranging from pure nuclear physics to astrophysics and medical physics. In 1990, ISOLDE was transferred to the Proton Synchrotron Booster, and the SC closed down after 33 years of service. The exhibition will take visitors back from the present to the beginning of physics research at CERN!
Places: 24 students per visit
Antiproton Decelerator
The Antiproton Decelerator (AD) provides low-energy antiprotons mainly for studies of antimatter. Previously, “antiparticle factories” at CERN and elsewhere consisted of chains of accelerators, each performing one of the steps needed to provide antiparticles for experiments. Now the AD performs all the tasks alone, from making antiprotons to delivering them to the experiments. In 2002 the AD made headlines around the world when the ATHENA and ATRAP experiments successfully made large numbers of antiatoms for the first time. Currently it serves four experiments that are studying antimatter: AEGIS, ALPHA, ASACUSA and ATRAP. The ACE experiment also uses antiprotons, to assess their suitability for cancer therapy.
Places: 24 students per visit
You must wear closed shoes, no high heels, no pregnant women, no active implants!
Data Centre
The CERN Data Centre is the heart of CERN’s entire scientific, administrative, and computing infrastructure. All services, including email, scientific data management and videoconferencing use equipment based in the data centre. The 95000 processor cores and 10000 servers hosted in its three rooms run 24/7. The CERN data centre processes one petabyte of data each day, or the equivalent of around 210000 DVDs.
Places: 24 students per visit
SM18
The SM18 facility at CERN is a world leading magnet test facility for testing magnets and instrumentation at low temperature (1.9 K up to 80 K) and up to high currents (20 kA). Due to its wide infrastructure and long expertise it is has unique capabilities to to carry out: tests for instrumentation and superconducting magnets in vertical or horizontal test benches, magnetic measurements of all types of accelerator magnets.
Places: 24 students per visit
You must wear closed shoes, no high heels, no pregnant women, no active implants!