Buy Online: Synthetic diamond to play a role in helping to uncover universe’s fundamentals
When the world’s most advanced particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider starts operation in 2008, it will employ components made from synthetic diamond as part of key safety systems within the experimental stations. The LHC is the highest energy particle accelerator ever constructed. Located at CERN in Switzerland has been built to answer some of the outstanding questions posed by theoretical physicists about the nature of the origins of the universe.
Initially synthetic diamond will be used for safety monitoring when the LHC begins operation; as the collider moves towards higher collision energies and intensities, diamond is a contender to replace current detection technology that cannot survive the harsh radiation environment for long periods.
Two LHC’s key experiments will use diamond. These are ATLAS (“A Torroidal LHC Apparatus”), and the CMS (“Compact Muon Solenoid”) which are both general-purpose experiments for recording the proton-proton collisions at the LHC. The ATLAS experiment is designed to find unequivocal evidence for the Higgs boson. In ATLAS, diamond will be used within the beam conditions monitor, BCM, which is essentially a safety system to monitor beam operation conditions by distinguishing proton-proton collisions from background caused by up-stream interactions.
Sixteen 10 x 10 mm2 diamond sensors form the heart of the ATLAS Beam Conditions Monitor. The sensors are placed 1.8 m from the interaction point, and only 6 cm from the beam line. Diamond allows scientists to 'observe' signals from collisions within a few nanoseconds of the beam crossing leaving a further 10-15 ns 'open' during which time only particles that result from poorly tuned, or 'lost' protons, from the machine will be observed. By carefully monitoring the rate at which lost protons are detected, the alarm can be sounded if these losses mount dramatically – a potentially dangerous situation for the rest of the ATLAS experiment. For the CMS, similar beam conditions monitors are likely at several locations close to the beam pipe.
Future opportunities
As well as this monitoring application, diamond could have a future role as part of the solid-state tracking devices that are at the heart of general-purpose high energy physics experiments. The LHC is planned to move to significantly higher luminosities and this results in high radiation levels which few detector materials are able to survive. Diamond, as well as being ‘radiation hard’, also has electrical properties suitable for single particle detections. Prototype diamond-based detectors are already being tested and it is likely that a decision will be made in 2009 on their adoption as solid-state tracking devices.
Diamond has already made a significant contribution to Beam Conditions Monitoring through installations at several other accelerator complexes around the world such as BaBar, the high energy physics experiment located at the Stanford Linear Acceleration Centre, near Stanford University in California, and Belle at the National High Energy Physics Laboratory of Japan. With current work in progress, it seems likely that diamond will play a far greater role in helping uncover the greatest mysteries – how the universe works.
More detailed information on the uses of diamond is contained in an article published in the latest edition of Industrial Diamond Review which can be accessed on line at idr-online.com
For more information contact:
Christopher Ogilvie Thompson
Element Six Ltd
Email: info@e6.com
Tel: +44 1344 638200
Fax: +44 1344 638236