Lighting the way for the next generation of particle detectors

By Kristiane Bernhard-Novotny

As part of the North Area Consolidation programme NA-CONS, a new XCET threshold Cherenkov detector was put to the test on one of CERN’s North Area beamlines a year ago, marking the rebirth of a technology that has quietly supported particle physics for half a century.

For decades, XCET threshold Cherenkov detectors have helped scientists understand what kind of particles make up the mixed beams used in experiments at CERN. They belong to what is known as beam instrumentation, the collection of tools that measure and monitor the properties of particle beams, from their intensity and position to their composition.