collider

A collider is a type of particle accelerator that brings two beams of subatomic particles to high energy and makes them collide at a planned interaction point. By analyzing the resulting debris, scientists study fundamental particles and the forces that govern their interactions.

Colliders are classified as circular or linear. Circular colliders use magnets to bend and store beams in a ring, colliding when the beams intersect at detectors. They can reach high energies with protons, but light particles such as electrons lose more energy to radiation in a circle. Linear colliders accelerate two beams in straight sections and collide them once, reducing certain radiation losses but requiring very long facilities to reach comparable energies.

A collider complex typically comprises an injector chain to prepare beams, the main accelerator, and detectors that surround the collision area. Detectors track particles, measure energies, and reconstruct events to infer particle properties and the outcomes of fundamental interactions.

The Large Hadron Collider at CERN is the best-known example, operational since 2008 and associated with the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012. Other facilities have included the Tevatron at Fermilab and various proposed projects such as next-generation circular colliders and advanced linear colliders aiming for higher energies or greater precision.

Collider research seeks to test the Standard Model, measure particle properties with precision, and search for new physics beyond current theories, including dark matter candidates and extra dimensions. The work has driven advances in accelerator technology, detector instrumentation, and data analysis.