Events in Delphi

DELPHI is one of the experiments at the LEP Collider at CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics, near Geneva. The LEP machine collides beams of matter (electrons) head on with beams of antimatter (antielectrons, or positrons). When the matter and antimatter meet they self-destruct in a burst of pure energy, which immediately rematerialises as newly created particles of matter - energy into mass in accordance with Einsten's famous equation
E=mc²

The DELPHI experiment consists of layers of particle detectors which pick up the debris from electron-positron collisions at the heart of the apparatus. Each layer performs a different task in identifying the particles produced in a collision. This helps the physicists to work out what has happened in a collision - just as detectives put together evidence at the scene of a crime. If you would like to find out more about particle physics before you follow this trail, look here.
If you would like to try a more difficult identification exercise, look here.

c.sutton 26/9/97