The Experimental Areas Group within the Beams Department (BE-EA) looks after the secondary beamlines, infrastructure, and management of the fixed target CERN experimental areas, provides support to LHC experiments and machine detector interfaces (MDI), offering associated engineering support and specific technical services necessary for all experiments, related projects, and users.

The Group is responsible for:

  • the management, infrastructure, and support of the CERN experimental areas (AD, EA, NA), including related irradiation and beam test facilities;
  • the design, installation, beam-readiness, commissioning, exploitation, maintenance and upgrade of the EA and NA secondary beam lines, experimental areas and beam test facilities;
  • similarly, for AD-ELENA, but focusing on maintenance, consolidation and upgrade activities of related ring elements, transfer lines and experimental areas;
  • the mechanical design, production and maintenance of key beamline elements both for secondary beamlines (e.g. collimators, CEDAR) as well as MDI related absorbers (e.g. TAXN, TAXS);
  • ensuring the coordination between experiments, users, operators, as well as concerned equipment and service groups, also addressing the configuration management of related secondary beamlines and experimental areas;
  • providing key technical services and related contract support for relevant services (cabling, connectors, and respective qualification; mechanical and vacuum support for secondary beamlines and areas; corresponding design office; multi-directional scaffolding; gas supply, distribution, and maintenance; cleaning and dismantling in highly radioactive areas; shielding block supply and management);
  • supporting the LHC experiments with their infrastructure needs and facilitating their interface with the Accelerator and Technology Sector;
  • offering engineering design and coordination support for CERN-wide projects linked to secondary beamlines and experimental areas as well as machine-experiment interfaces;
  • ensuring the coordination, scheduling, safety aspects and resource planning linked to the above activities.

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