"See" the future SHiP experiment

The Search for Hidden Particles (SHiP) experiment is a proposed fixed-target facility at CERN designed to explore particle physics beyond the Standard Model. It will be installed at the future Beam Dump Facility (BDF), using a high-intensity proton beam from CERN’s Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) directed onto a dense target. The collisions will produce a large number of heavy mesons whose decays may generate new long-lived, very feebly interacting particles (FIPs) that have so far escaped detection.

SHiP primarily aims to search for “hidden sector” particles, such as Heavy Neutral Leptons, dark photons, and other feebly interacting states, that could help explain the small neutrino masses, dark matter, and the observed matter-antimatter asymmetry in the Universe. The detector design includes an active muon shield to suppress background, a large decay volume surrounded by sensitive veto detectors, and precision tracking and timing systems to identify rare decay signatures from FIPs.

CERN produced a short animation to illustrate the enormous dimensions of the BDF and the SHiP experiment.

By combining very high beam intensity with strong background rejection, SHiP will probe previously unexplored regions of parameter space, complementing high-energy collider experiments. The Astroparticle Group at the University of Freiburg contributes to the design and development of the Surround Background Tagger (SBT), a large-area system made of liquid scintillator-filled cells that surround the decay volume. 

• Link to High-Intensity ECN3 Project at CERN
• Direct link to animation