ZEUS

The ZEUS experiment was operational as a detector during the period 1992-2007. Research took place at the HERA accelerator at DESY (Hamburg, Germany). It was located in an underground tunnel with a circumference of 6.3 km. In this, high-energy electrons and protons collided frontally. The research project involved about 400 physicists from 51 institutes in 12 countries.

Why?
The electron is a pinpoint particle without an internal structure, whereas the proton is made up from quarks and gluons. Forcing the particles to collide at high energy has made it possible to study the structure of protons in considerable detail.

Without this knowledge it would be impossible to understand the results from other experiments, such as that of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). For example, when an electron collides with a quark, many new particles are produced. By measuring the energy, position and identity of all of these new particles, scientists can determine exactly what happened during the collision.

The detector
The most important parts of the ZEUS detector, built around the collision point of the electron and the proton, were the vertex detector (see photo) and the central tracking detector, placed in a solenoid magnetic field generated in a superconducting magnet; these detectors were surrounded by calorimeters and muon detectors. Technicians and physicists from Nikhef contributed to the development and production of several parts: the calorimeter and the vertex detector, And the associated electronics necessary for the registration and processing of the detector signals.