The Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment is a large particle physics detector being (2003) built on the proton-proton Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in Switzerland. Apprximately 2300 people from 159 scientific institutes form the collaboration building it. It will be located in an underground chamber at Cessy in France, just across the border from Geneva. The completed detector will be cylindrical, 21 metres long and 16 metres diameter and weigh approximately 125000 tonnes.
The main goals of the experiment are:
- The discovery of the Higgs boson
- To look for evidence of supersymmetry
- To be able to study aspects of heavy ion collisions
- Its relatively small size
- The powerful solenoid
- Its optimization for tracking muons