CMS, A GENERAL-PURPOSE DETECTOR FOR THE LHC

The CMS collaboration proposes to build a general purpose detector designed to run at the highest luminosity the LHC. The CMS (Compact Muon Solenoid) detector has been optimized for the search of the SM Higgs boson over a mass range from 90 GeV to 1 TeV, but it also allows detection of a wide range of possible signatures from alternative electro-weak symmetry breaking mechanisms. Muons, photons and electrons are identified and measured with high precision. The modularity of the CMS design allows a staged version to be built within tight cost constraints, while sacrificing little of the low luminosity physics performance.