The CMS experiment at CERN

Abstract

The search for new physics at high energies is the motivation for the construction of the CMS (Compact Muon Solenoid) experiment at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research in Geneva. It is designed to find answers to many of the open fundamental questions in physics through the study of proton-proton and heavy-ion collisions produced at the world's most powerful particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider. The CMS experiment, which is presently under construction, consists of a silicon inner tracker with an embedded precision vertex detector, a crystal electromagnetic calorimeter, a brass-scintillator hadron calorimeter, a muon system and detectors for the forward regions close to the beam axis of the accelerator. A superconducting coil generates a strong solenoidal magnetic field, which is required for the measurement of particle momenta. The trigger and data acquisition system selects events and stores them for the analysis. The search for the Higgs particle and Supersymmetry are amongst the principal research topics to be studied at the CMS experiment.