LHC proton run for 2011 reaches successful conclusion

On 18 October 2011, the grand total of data delivered by the LHC during the year reaches almost six inverse femtobarns. At the beginning of the year’s run, the objective for the LHC was to deliver a quantity of data known to physicists as one inverse femtobarn – approximately 100 trillion (102) proton-proton collisions - during the course of 2011. The first inverse femtobarn came on 17 June, setting the experiments up well for the major physics conferences of the summer and requiring the 2011 data objective to be revised upwards to five inverse femtobarns. This milestone is passed on 18 October.

“At the end of this year’s proton running, the LHC is reaching cruising speed,” says CERN’s Director for Accelerators and Technology, Steve Myers. “To put things in context, the present data production rate is a factor of 4 million higher than in the first run in 2010 and a factor of 30 higher than at the beginning of 2011.”