CMS is one of the two general purpose detectors for the proton-proton collider of CERN, the LHC.
The main purposes of the LHC are to study the mechanism of spontaneous symmetry breaking in electroweak interactions and to explore physics beyond the Standard Model. LHC is definitively a discovery machine! It will nevertheless also allow physicists to study Standard Model processes more deeply as for example top quark physics, as well as heavy ion collisions at unprecedented energy.
CMS is an international collaboration in which Belgium and in particular Brussels (ULB-VUB) has an important participation. The Brussels group has participated in the contruction of the endcap tracker detector of CMS. The Brussels teams were involved in the study of the CMS physics potential using simulations, and are now analysing the fresh LHC data at the energy of 7 TeV in the proton-proton centre of mass.
The CMS Brussels groups are very active in the high energy data analysis, both looking at tests of the Standard Model predictions at the high energy frontier and the search for new physics beyond the Standard Model. This studies are performed in many different final states, mainly focusing on :
- Higgs physics
- top quarks and beyond
- high energy electrons (HEEP group)
- QCD
The links to the research groups are given in the left frame.