Industrial Technology for Unprecented Energy and Luminosity : The Large Hadron Collider

With over 3 billion Swiss francs procurement contracts under execution in industry and the installation of major technical systems in its first 3.3 km sector, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) construction is now in full swing at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research. The LHC is not only the most challenging particle accelerator, it is also the largest global project ever for a scientific instrument based on advanced technology. Starting from accelerator performance requirements, we recall how these can be met by an appropriate combination of technologies, such as high-field superconducting magnets, superfluid helium cryogenics, power electronics, with particular emphasis on developments required to meet demanding specifications, and industrialization issues which had to be solved for achieving series production of precision components under tight quality assurance and within limited resources. This provides the opportunity for reviewing the production status of the main systems and the progress of the project.