The ATLAS Barrel Toroid, the largest magnet every built, has successfully been powered up to its nominal operating conditions at the first attempt. Named for its shape, this magnet provides a powerful magnetic field for ATLAS, one of the major particle detectors being prepared to take data at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the new particle accelerator scheduled to turn on in November 2007. The ATLAS Barrel Toroid consists of eight superconducting coils, each in the shape of a round-cornered rectangle, 5m wide, 25 m long and weighing 100 tonnes, all aligned to millimeter precision. It will work with other magnets in ATLAS to bend the paths of charged particles produced in collisions at the LHC, enabling important properties to be measured. Some 1800 scientists from 165 universities and laboratories representing 35 countries are building the ATLAS detector and preparing to take data next year.
