Overview of Instruments

Borexino: High mass neutrino detector specialized on low energy solar neutrinos using ultra pure liquid scintillators in the Gran Sasso laboratory. Operated by an international collaboration, initiated at TUM. Study of the solar neutrino fluxes at different neutrino energies.
CAST: Axion search facility, using a high field dipole magnet at CERN with pointing capabilities. Operated by an international collaboration. Search for the axion conversion in a magnetic field with subsequent detection.
COMPASS: High luminosity experiment at the CERN SPS for muon and hadron scattering at 100-300 GeV. Operated by an international collaboration, partly initiated at TUM. Hadron spin structure, hadronic/gluonic excitation spectrum, low energy QCD investigations
CRESST: Cryogenic Rare Event Search with Superconducting Thermometers. An experiment to search for weakly interacting massive particles as candidates for Dark Matter in the Universe.
Double CHOOZ: Neutrino oscillation experiment using two identical ?-detectors (far and near) planned at the twin power reactor station Chooz (France). Operated by an international collaboration, initiated by TUM. Study of the neutrino mixing angle (sin?13) by disappearance of electron anti-neutrinos.
eROSITA: X-ray survey telescope developed at MPE to be mounted on the Russian Spectrum-Röntgen-Gamma satellite, launch planned in 2010. eROSITA should perform a new imaging X-ray all-sky survey in the 0.1-10 keV band, where the detection of 1 Mio active galactic nuclei AGN and 100.000 clusters of galaxies is expected. One of the prime scientific goals is the determination of the Dark Energy equation of state.
EURECA: European Underground Rare Event Array. A European large scale cryogenic detector for search for dark matter particles in the universe. European extension of the CRESST collaboration.
FRS: High acceptance magnetic separator at SIS18 of GSI Darmstadt for production of relativistic beams of short lived nuclei following projectile fragmentation or fission. Studies of the very neutron-deficient or neutron-rich nuclei.
GERDA: High mass germanium detector system for the detection of neutrinoless double ?-decay under construction in the Gran-Sasso laboratory. Operated by a German collaboration and leadership of MPP.
GROND: Gamma-Burst optical/near infrared (NIR) Detector to follow-up Gamma-ray bursts (GRB) from the ground in order to determine their photometric redshift. The camera has 4 optical and 3 NIR channels and is sensitive to redshifts up to z=15. GROND will be installed at the MPG/ESO 2.2m telescope. A similar instrument is planned for the new 2m Wendelstein telescope.
HADES: High luminosity experiment at GSI to study QCD phase transitions at low energies in hadron/nucleus interactions using hadron and ion beams. Operated by an international collaboration.
HERA: provides high energy collision of electrons and protons at DESY. Two experiments (H1 and Zeus) with involvement of MPP are operated by international collaborations. Study of nucleon structure at very small distance scale, search for compositeness of quarks.
HET/VIRUS: A very large fibre-spectrograph with ~150 integral-field units (VIRUS) being discussed for the Hobby-Eberly Telescope (Texas). LMU has a share of the telescope and is involved in the HETDEX project aiming at studying baryonic acoustic oscillations from high-redshift Galaxies.
ILC/muon cooling: Projects in the framework of a next lepton-lepton collider envisaged by the international high energy physics community. A muon collider allows high precision studies of electroweak processes. Muon cooling is a prerequisite for such a machine demanding special R&D.
Integral: ESA satellite mission for Gamma-ray astronomy, carrying different gamma experiments. The gamma spectrometer SPI has been developed in an international collaboration, with MPE responsible for the anticoincidence system. MPA has access to a substantial amount of Integral data through the Russian share.
ISOLDE: Facility at CERN PS Booster for production of short lived nuclei using Isotope Separation Online (ISOL) method. High precision studies of masses, radii, and decay properties and reaction studies with reaccelerated beams of 2-5 MeV per nucleon.
LBT: Large Binocular Telescope on Mount Graham (Arizona, U.S.A.). Two 8.4m mirrors are installed on a common telescope mount and provide an unprecedented interferometric focus with a 22.5 m baseline. Germany has a 25% share in the LBT. MPE together with German Universities is developing and building one of the facility instruments, LUCIFER, a unique multi-object near-infrared spectrograph with robotic slit-mask exchange unit.
LENA: (Low Energy Neutrino Astronomy). Ultra high mass underground neutrino detector under discussion to study solar, supernova and geo-neutrinos. Initiated by TUM.
LHC/ATLAS: Very large multipurpose particle detector for highest energies under construction at the LHC (large hadron collider) at CERN. Operated by a large international organisation with participation of LMU and MPP. Search for the Higgs particle and study of its properties, search for supersymmetric particles, testing of the standard model at high energies and small distance scale.
MAGIC: Cherenkov-Telescope with 17 m diameter for the TeV Gamma-ray range, developed and built by MPP. One telescope is in operation on the La Palma Canary Island observatory, a second telescope is being constructed.
PANDA: High luminosity experiment planned at the antiproton ring at FAIR with centre of mass energies of 3-6 GeV. Operated by an international collaboration, partially initiated at TUM. Study of quarkonia and gluonic excitation spectrum. Probing QCD at large distances with precision experiments.
Planck: ESA satellite to study the microwave background emission with unprecedented accuracy, band coverage and angular resolution. Launch planned 2008.
Precision experiments with neutrons: High and ultrahigh precision experiments using neutrons in external fields (electric dipole moment of neutron) or neutron decay studies (lifetime, decay-asymmetries) for standard model tests. Performed at reactor based neutron sources ILL and FRMII. Part of TR25 at the DFG (submitted).
Super-FRS: Very large acceptance magnetic separator at SIS 100/300 at FAIR for production of relativistic beams of very short lived nuclei following projectile fragmentation or fission. Factor 1000-10000 higher intensities compared to FRS.
Swift: US/European X-ray satellite for the observation of Gamma-ray burst after-glows. A large area hard X-ray detector provides burst signals, which trigger a slew of the satellite to observe the afterglow with imaging X-ray and optical telescopes. MPE is involved in the design and calibration of the X-ray telescope.
Tandem/MLL: Low energy 14 MV electrostatic accelerator for high precision nuclear reaction studies with the Q3D spectrograph and highest sensitivity Accelerator Mass Spectrometry using a gas-filled magnet system for determination of supernova (SN) output and astrophysical reaction rates. Operated by the MLL of the two Munich universities.
TeVatron/D0: Large multipurpose particle detector for high energies operated at the TeVatron p-pbar collider at Fermilab (USA). Operated by an international organization with participation of LMU. Search for Higgs and supersymmetric particles, spectroscopy and QCD investigations at high energies.
VLT (ESO): Very Large Telescope of the European Southern observatory on the Paranal Observatory in Chile. Four telescopes with 8.2m diameter are equipped with a broad variety of powerful instruments, a substantial number of which have been developed in the Garching/Munich institutes. Several of the VLT telescopes can be combined interferometrically with smaller outrigger telescopes to form the VLT Interferometer VLTI.
VST/KIDS: A large public survey with the VLT Survey Telescope VST on Paranal. KIDS is makes use of the large CCD camera Omega-CAM developed and built at the LMU Observatory Munich in an international collaboration.
XMM Newton: ESA cornerstone X-ray observatory carrying three X-ray telescopes with diameters of ~80 cm and focal length of 750 cm, equipped with X-ray CCD cameras and reflection gratings. The pnCCD sensor has been developed at the MPE/MPP semiconductor lab and the camera has been developed and built by MPE.
LRZ: Leibniz Rechenzentrum, large computing centre of the state of Bavaria located in Garching from summer 2006 on.
RZG: Rechenzentrum Garching, computing centre of the Max-Planck society located in Garching