On 9 September 2026, a team of the PSI High Energy Physics group successfully extracted the Phase-1 Barrel Pixel Detector from the CMS Detector at CERN. The operation went smoothly and everything went according to plan.
The detector, which was built at PSI, had been in operation for almost ten years and recorded more than 470 fb-1 of data. Its removal marks the end of an important era of LHC physics and represents a significant milestone in the work preparing for the High-Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC).
Further development work on the pixel detector for the HL-LHC is currently underway at PSI. The original pixel detector, which was also built at PSI, will soon be on display in an exhibition at the PSI Forum, giving visitors the opportunity to see a piece of LHC history up close.