Collider Detector at Fermilab

The Collider Detector at Fermilab (CDF) experimental collaboration studies high energy particle collisions from the Tevatron, the world's former highest-energy particle accelerator. The goal is to discover the identity and properties of the particles that make up the universe and to understand the forces and interactions between those particles. The Collider Detector at Fermilab (CDF) experimental collaboration studies high energy particle collisions from the Tevatron, the world's former highest-energy particle accelerator. The goal is to discover the identity and properties of the particles that make up the universe and to understand the forces and interactions between those particles. CDF is an international collaboration of about 600 physicists (from about 30 American universities and National laboratories and about 30 groups from universities and national laboratories from Italy, Japan, UK, Canada, Germany, Spain, Russia, Finland, France, Taiwan, Korea, and Switzerland). The CDF detector itself weighed 5000 tons and was about 12 meters in all three dimensions. The goal of the experiment is to measure exceptional events out of the billions of particle collisions in order to: The Tevatron collided protons and antiprotons at a center-of-mass energy of about 2 TeV. The very high energy available for these collisions made it possible to produce heavy particles such as the Top quark and the W and Z bosons, which weigh much more than a proton (or antiproton). These heavier particles were identified through their characteristic decays. The CDF apparatus recorded the trajectories and energies of electrons, photons and light hadrons. Neutrinos did not register in the apparatus which led to an apparent missing energy. Other hypothetical particles might leave a missing energy signature, and some searches for new phenomena are based on that. There is another experiment similar to CDF called D0 which had a detector located at another point on the Tevatron ring. There were two particle detectors located on the Tevatron at Fermilab: CDF and D0. CDF predated D0 as the first detector on the Tevatron. Construction of CDF began in 1982 under the leadership of John Peoples. The Tevatron was completed in 1983 and CDF began to take data in 1985. Over the years, two major updates were made to CDF. The first upgrade began in 1989 and the second upgrade began in 2001. Each upgrade was considered a 'run.' Run 0 was the run before any upgrades, Run I was after the first upgrade and Run II was after the second upgrade. Run II includes upgrades on the central tracking system, preshower detectors and extension on muon coverage.