The LHCb beam pipe

The LHCb beam pipe has a conical shape through the whole of the LHCb detector, which makes it different from that of the other experiments. Along its total length of 19 m, its diameter ranges from 50 mm close to the LHCb interaction point to 380 mm in the experiment’s muon system. The beam pipe is composed of four sections, all of different lengths. Three of these sections are made of beryllium and measure 11.6 m, giving LHCb the longest beryllium beam pipe of all the LHC experiments. The last and biggest section is made of stainless steel. Both the shape and material of the beam pipe were chosen to optimise its transparency to particles emerging from the collisions that take place at the LHC.