When you plan to move and try to find helpers, they often ask: to which floor? If the DESY people working in the detector lab would depend on the help of friends, they would have difficulties to find volunteers because the answer would be: seventh floor! Everything has to be transported from the ground floor to deep down underground. The HEP groups' detector lab moves from hall 5 to HERA hall west. In order to make room the electronics hut of the still present HERA-B detector was dismantled.

The new detector laboratory in close neighbourhood to HERA-B is nearly completed.

The laboratory is now placed at the former site of HERA-B's electronics hut, and consists of parts of it — this allowed a stable and at the same time cost–effective construction of the laboratory. At this site, in three laboratories of 70 square metres, part of the detector development is done for the future International Linear Collider ILC and, soon, also for the next upgrade of the Large Hadron Collider LHC at CERN in Geneva — the sLHC.

“We decided to use the HERA hall west because it is within reach for our students and guests and it is already equipped to house a detector” says Felix Sefkow, deputy head of the FLC group. Unfortunately, HERA hall west will not provide enough space for the complete detector development, thus it will be necessary to use HERA hall north for part of it. Moreover, the electronics laboratories in building 1 will still be used extensively.

In the coming years, all these premises will be used for the activities within the framework of the Helmholtz Alliance and of the Cluster of Excellence with the University of Hamburg. In the future, the free space in hall 5 will be used for serial production of the undulators for the European XFEL that is currently under construction. Part of the hall is already in use for the production of these special magnets.

On 7 November, the Open Day at DESY, the detector laboratory will be more or less complete. Visitors to HERA hall west will thus be able to see not only existing detectors but also the newest developments in the fireld of detector construction.

-- Gerrit Hörentrup
from DESY inForm, November issue