The Experimental Areas Group is responsible for the secondary beamlines, infrastructure, and management of CERN’s fixed-target experimental areas. It also provides support to LHC experiments including Forward Physics Experiments and machine detector interfaces (MDI), offering the associated engineering support and specialized technical services required by all experiments, related projects, and users.
The Group is responsible for the following activities:
Management, infrastructure, and user support for the CERN experimental areas: Antiproton Decelerator (AD), East Area (EA), North Area (NA), and HiRadMat, including the associated irradiation and test-beam facilities.
Design, installation, beam readiness, commissioning, operation, maintenance, consolidation, and upgrade of the EA and NA secondary beamlines, as well as the HiRadMat experimental areas and test-beam facilities. For AD–ELENA, coordination of maintenance, consolidation, and upgrade activities in the AD ring and its experimental areas.
Mechanical design, production, operation, and maintenance of key secondary beamline elements and experimental-area equipment (e.g. collimators, CEDAR detectors, vacuum systems) as defined under BE-EA equipment responsibility, as well as LHC MDI absorbers (e.g. TAXN, TAXS).
Coordination between experiments and test-beam users, BE-OP operators, and the relevant equipment and service groups. This includes configuration management, documentation, and infrastructure management for the experimental areas under the Group’s responsibility.
Provision of specialized technical services and associated contract support, including cabling and connectors (and their qualification), design office services, multi-directional scaffolding, gas supply, distribution and maintenance, and CERN-wide shielding block supply and logistics.
Support to LHC experiments including Forward Physics Experiments and machine detector interfaces for their infrastructure needs and liaison with the Accelerator and Technology Sector.
Engineering design and coordination support for CERN-wide projects related to secondary beamlines, experimental areas, and machine-experiment interfaces.
Coordination of scheduling, safety aspects, and resource planning associated with all the above activities.