The First Year of the Large Hadron Collider: A Brief Review

TL;DR

This paper reviews the first year of LHC operations, highlighting its performance and key physics results including Standard Model tests, new particle searches, and heavy-ion collision phenomena.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive summary of the initial physics achievements and experimental performance of the LHC during its first year of data collection.

Findings

Measurement of W-, Z-boson and top quark production cross-sections

Improved limits on supersymmetric particles

Observation of jet-quenching and J/Psi suppression in lead-lead collisions

Abstract

The first year of LHC data taking provided an integrated luminosity of about 35/pb in proton-proton collisions at sqrt(s)=7 TeV. The accelerator and the experiments have demonstrated an excellent performance. The experiments have obtained important physics results in many areas, ranging from tests of the Standard Model to searches for new particles. Among other results the physics highlights have been the measurements of the W-, Z-boson and t t-bar production cross-sections, improved limits on supersymmetric and other hypothetical particles and the observation of jet-quenching, elliptical flow and J/Psi suppression in lead-lead collisions at sqrt(sNN) = 2.76 TeV.