ALICE and ATLAS

CERN is a unique international laboratory and creative research environment that is linked to multiple Nobel prizes and innovations.

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN is the only experimental facility capable of probing the high energy frontier to explore the fundamental properties of the Universe, and will remain the premier infrastructure for experimentalparticle and heavy ion physics for at least another 20-years.

The ALICE and ATLAS experiments at the LHC have been designed, constructed and commissioned by large international collaborations which now operate the detectors to address a breadth of research questions, ranging from the properties of the quark-gluon plasma and the Higgs boson to the nature of the dark matter and the dark energy.

The Swedish ALICE and ATLAS research groups at KTH, Lund, Stockholm, and Uppsala University are founding members of the collaborations and have made crucial contributions to their construction.

This has enabled a rich Swedish research programme at the very forefront of experimental particle and heavy ion physics that has attracted extensive funding from both VR/NT and KAW, and also inspired many young Swedish students to pursue a career in STEM.

In order to maintain access to the science data, the Swedish research groups are obliged to carry out maintenance and operation task, cover Sweden’s share of the costs for central technical services and hardware maintenance, and provide the pledged share of e-infrastructure resources.