The muon spectrometer of the Atlas experiment is used to measure the passage of muons and antimuons produced by the decay of fundamental particles that occurs in proton collisions at the Large Hadron Collider. One of the muon spectrometer’s subdetectors, the “Small Wheel,” was replaced by the “New Small Wheel” in late 2021: this was a project involving four countries: Canada, Israel, China, and Chile.
Theexperimental particle physicsdivision at the Saphir Millennium Institute encompasses a wide range of research and technological developments. This includes not only the development, testing, implementation, and use of particle detectors (muons, neutrinos, etc.), but also themapping of radon gas emissionsin Chile, among other projects.
In addition to working on the creation of the "New Small Wheel", the Chilean research teams linked to the Saphir Millennium Institute are working on Phase II of the upgrade of the Atlas experiment, a work that will be extended for five years starting in 2021, which includes the design and creation of a specific chip for the Atlas Muon System, among other instruments for the experiment. This work is multidisciplinary and requires cooperation between particle physics and electrical engineering specialists, which, in turn, will allow the development of new technologies and techniques that will lead to new discoveries in high-energy physics.
Other experiments in which researchers from the Saphir Millennium Institute are collaborating include theJiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory(JUNO, China), theSouthern Wide-field Gamma-ray Observatory(SWGO), and theFermi National Laboratory(Fermilab, United States), among others.