The first of a pair of steel tables and shielding superstructures, which will house the two 110 tonne forward hadron calorimeters for the CMS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), are due at CERN in January 2004. These large, heavy mechanical pieces (175 tonnes each) are under construction at the Iranian firm HEPCO, located in Arak, an industrial town 200 km west of Tehran. The second set will be completed and shipped to CERN in spring. In addition to these tables and shielding structures, a couple of lead doors and lifting tools are also being manufactured in Iran; they comprise the Iranian in-kind contribution to the construction of the CMS detector.
In 2001 a Memorandum of Understanding for co-operation between CERN and Iran was signed, and in the same year the Institute for Studies in Theoretical Physics and Mathematics (IPM-Tehran) joined the CMS collaboration. This was the first step towards developing a high-energy physics programme at the institute, which was traditionally strong in theoretical physics but has recently begun initiating experimental programmes in nanotechnology, accelerator and particle physics.
There are currently two students from IPM at CERN working on their PhD studies. They are gaining hands-on experience with detector design and construction, and are conducting LHC physics simulations for the CMS. Another Iranian student will join the team at the end of February.
