DELPHI (standing for "DEtector with Lepton, Photon and Hadron Identification") was one of the four main detectors of the
Large Electron–Positron Collider
The Large Electron–Positron Collider (LEP) was one of the largest particle accelerators ever constructed. It was built at CERN, a multi-national centre for research in nuclear and particle physics near Geneva, Switzerland.
LEP collided elec ...
(LEP) at
CERN, one of the largest
particle accelerators
A particle accelerator is a machine that uses electromagnetic fields to propel charged particles to very high speeds and energies, and to contain them in well-defined beams.
Large accelerators are used for fundamental research in particle ...
ever made. Like the other three detectors, it recorded and analyzed the result of the collision between LEP's colliding particle beams.
[Detector with Lepton, Photon and Hadron Identification DELPHI: sub-fonds level description]
, ''CERN Archive''. Accessed on line November 30, 2007.
DELPHI had the shape of a cylinder over 10 metres in length and diameter, and a weight of 3500 tons. In operation,
electron
The electron (, or in nuclear reactions) is a subatomic particle with a negative one elementary electric charge. Electrons belong to the first generation of the lepton particle family,
and are generally thought to be elementary partic ...
s and
positron
The positron or antielectron is the antiparticle or the antimatter counterpart of the electron. It has an electric charge of +1 '' e'', a spin of 1/2 (the same as the electron), and the same mass as an electron. When a positron collide ...
s from the accelerator went through a pipe going through the center of the cylinder, and collided in the middle of the detector. The collision products then travelled outwards from the pipe and were analyzed by many subdetectors designed to identify the nature and trajectories of the particles produced by the collision.
DELPHI was constructed between 1983 and 1988, and LEP started operation in 1989. After LEP was decommissioned in November 2000, DELPHI began to be dismantled, and dismantling was complete in September 2001.
''BBC News'', September 14, 2000. Accessed on line November 30, 2007.
References
External links
*Record fo
DELPHI
experiment on INSPIRE-HEP INSPIRE-HEP is an open access digital library for the field of high energy physics (HEP). It is the successor of the Stanford Physics Information Retrieval System (SPIRES) database, the main literature database for high energy physics since the 1970 ...
CERN experiments
Particle experiments
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