Faculty Interaction

Norbert Neumeister

Department of Physics
Purdue University

Brief Project Description:

CMS Project – Norbert Neumeister and Thomas Hacker:
The Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) is a large general purpose particle physics detector under construction on the Large- Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in Switzerland. The main goals of the CMS project are to: explore physics at the TeV scale; search for the Higgs boson; search for evidence of supersymmetry; and to study various aspects of heavy ion collision. The CMS contains a large solenoid that is 13 meters long, 6 meters in diameter. The solenoid coils are constructed of a refrigerated superconducting niobium-titanium alloy that will produce a powerful 4 Tesla magnetic field within a large volume when it is completed this year.


Figure 1. Transverse Slice of CMS Detector.

The CMS contains detector subsystems capable of measuring the energy and momentum of photons, electrons, muons, and other products of proton collisions using the LHC as a source. A transverse slice of the CMS detector is shown in Figure 1. The detectors will produce an enormous amount of data – 9.7 PB per year [22]. Distilling knowledge from these data is a significant challenge.

The computing model for CMS is shown in Figure 2. Data is delivered from the CMS detector at CERN to six Tier-1 sites. Approximately 25 Tier-2 sites will receive data from Tier-1 sites for simulation, digitization, and calibration of simulation data with observational data. Tier-2 sites provide the full simulation capacity for the CMS project, disk storage for subsets of Tier-1 data and analysis output, and a general analysis facility for community particle physics groups. Many researchers and students are involved in the CMS project at Purdue: 11 faculty and research scientists; 2 postdoctoral students; 6 engineers and support staff; 4 graduate students; and 26 undergraduate students.

The Rosen Center is a key partner for the CMS Tier-2 site at Purdue, providing support for the computational infrastructure.


Figure 2. CMS Project Computing Model