Content & Structure [Top]

Scope and content

This collection contains 2 parts :

• chronofiles, technical notes, specifications, minutes, divisional reports, technical committee minutes, etc, of Laboratory II, SPS, LEP, SL and personal collections of J B Adams, M Crowley Milling, V W Hatton, W C Middelkoop, B de Raad.
• J, Montes collection concerning SPS Shutdown (CERN-ARCH-SL : technical schedule, calendar, planning of shutdown work, LEP dismantling file...)

The 400 GeV Super Proton Synchrotron is a circular accelerator, 6 km in circumference, buried underground. A first design was put forward to Council in 1964 and, in a considerably modified form, the project was finally approved in February 1971.

It was built originally to accelerate protons - and continued to do so - but it has since also operated as a proton-antiproton collider, a heavy-ion accelerator, and an electron/positron injector for LEP (the Large Electron Positron collider).

The SPS can also accelerate lead ions to an energy of 170 GeV per nucleon, with 208 nucleons in the lead nucleus. In 2000, this was the highest energy obtained in the world, and it served for the study of the quark-gluon plasma which may have occurred shortly after the big bang.

The SPS will be the final pre-injector for the LHC (Large Hadron Collider), accelerating 26GeV/c protons from the PS to 450GeV/c before extraction to LHC. Many changes to the existing SPS are necessary before it can deliver the high brightness proton beams required by the LHC.

Appraisal, destruction and scheduling information

Nothing was destroyed.

Accruals

Further accruals are expected.

System of arrangement

The original order has been preserved. For more information the main categories of records, see : Annex of Super Proton Synchrotron records