ErUM-FSPs at the Large Hadron Collider

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world’s most powerful particle accelerator. It is located at CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics, in Geneva, Switzerland. More than 1,300 scientists from 28 German universities and other scientific institutions are an integral part of this international collaboration. Together, they are exploring the elementary building blocks of our universe and the fundamental laws of nature.

ALICE, ATLAS, CMS and LHCb – the four ErUM-FSPs at the Large Hadron Collider

The German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) supports this research with its framework program “Erforschung von Universum und Materie” (ErUM) - Exploration of the Universe and Matter. The German researchers working on the four major LHC experiments ALICE, ATLAS, CMS and LHCb have formed so-called Forschungsschwerpunkte (FSP) - research focuses. These ErUM-FSPs foster excellent scientific research and facilitate the transfer of expertise and innovative ideas into society and industry. Moreover they train young researchers at the highest scientific and technological level.

Big Data for Humanity’s Big Questions

The fundamental research conducted at the four LHC experiments poses major technological challenges for the involved scientists. Exabytes of data have to be recorded, processed, selected and stored in real time. With the continuously growing efficiency of the experiments, the challenges will continue to increase. Therefore, particle physicists often possess an extensive expertise in big data, artificial intelligence and high-performance computing and they keep expanding this know-how. They use and develop complex algorithms and efficient data analysis software to extract the relevant information from the vast amount of recorded data. In order to be able to process this enormous amount of data, all data centers around the world involved in the LHC experiments were connected in the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid (WLCG). The computing power of this Grid allows scientists to analyze the collected data to find answers to some of humanity's biggest questions, such as ‘What happened during the big bang?’.