H1 (particle detector)

H1 was a particle detector operated at the HERA (Hadron Elektron Ring Anlage) collider at the German national laboratory DESY in Hamburg.

Scientists continue to publish scientific papers based on data taken by the H1 experiment until today, and the detailed knowledge of the proton gained through experiments like H1 laid the foundation to much of the science done at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the CERN particle physics laboratory today.

The HERA North Hall, where the H1 detector was located, is now used for the new ALPS experiment, which looks for axion-like particles.

Leptons (electrons or positrons) collided with protons in the interaction point of H1, and the particles produced in these collisions were detected by the H1 detector components.

While H1 was a general-purpose detector, its main design feature was an asymmetric construction to cope with the boosted center of mass in the laboratory frame due to the large energy imbalance of the colliding beams.