The CMS magnet test and cosmic challenge

Understand

The CMS detector is under construction for imminent operation at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN near Geneva, Switzerland.

• The installation and commissioning is performed in a surface hall.
• Thereafter, all the main heavy elements of the detector, the disks and wheels, are lowered in the experimental cavern starting at the end of 2006.
• The superconducting magnet of CMS requires testing before lowering, providing a unique opportunity to operate all the sub-detectors and sub-systems together and to take data with cosmic muons as an important commissioning test.