Introduction

  • The CMS detector is a large general-purpose detector at the LHC, CERN.
  • CMS consists of layers of detector material that exploit the different properties of particles to catch and measure the energy or momentum of each one.

Tracker detector

  • A particle emerging from the collision and travelling outwards will first encounter the tracking system, made of silicon pixels and silicon strip detectors.
  • The tracker accurately measures the positions of passing charged particles allowing physicists to reconstruct their tracks.

Electromagnetic Calorimeter (ECAL)

  • The ECAL is designed to measure the energies of electrons and photons with great precision.

Hadron Calorimeter (HCAL)

Superconducting magnet

  • The CMS magnet is the central device around which the experiment is built, with a 3.7 Tesla magnetic field.
  • The magnet’s job is to bend the paths of particles emerging from high-energy collisions.
  • The strong magnetic field, combined with high-precision position measurements in the tracker and muon detectors, this allows accurate measurement of the momentum of even high-energy particles.
  • The CMS magnet is a superconducting solenoid.
  • The tracker and calorimeter detectors (ECAL and HCAL) fit snugly inside the magnet.

Muon detectors

  • There are three main muon detector systems in CMS: the drift tubes, cathode strip chambers, and resistive plate chambers.