LEP : the Large Electron Positron Collider: Conference MT17

LEP was CERN's flagship research facility from 1989 until 2000 when it stepped aside to make way for installation of the Laboratory's next major accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider, LHC. With a circumference of 27 kilometres, LEP was the largest circular particle collider in the world. Inside its beam pipe, about 100 metres underground, bunches of electrons and positrons raced around in opposite directions as they were accelerated to almost the speed of light. In its first phase of operation, LEP was designed to collide electrons and positrons at an energy of around 100 GeV. After some seven years of accumulating data at this energy to study the Z particle - electrically neutral carrier of the weak interaction - everything was done to boost the energy of LEP's beams as high as possible.