Click Here to see an Interactive Display of LEP Events
Since LEP was established in 1989 it has been capable of producing the Z0 boson - the neutral carrier of the weak force. This was not by chance, the accelerator was carefully designed to be able to accelerate particles to the maximum energy possible so that the Z particle could be produced. Since then the maximum energy the accelerator can impart to the particles has been increased by modifications and extensions to LEP over the years. In 1959 at CERN particles were accelerated to 24 GeV, this was the World record at the time. To create the Z0, the first stage of LEP, LEP1, accelerated particles to over 100 GeV, and over the past few years this value was increased in several stages to around 200 GeV. The current higher energy experiments are now dubbed LEP2. These higher energies have allowed the production of heavier particles such as the W+ and W- charged carriers of the weak force, and are allowing further testing of the "Standard Model" as well as the search for theoretical particles like the Higgs boson, which has not yet been discovered.
Click Here to see an Interactive Display of LEP Events