Roman pot

The Roman pot is the name of a technique (and of the relevant device) used in accelerator physics. Named after its implementation by the CERN-Rome collaboration in the early 1970s, it is an important tool to measure the total cross section of two particle beams in a collider. They are called pots because the detectors are housed in cylindrical vessels. The first generation of Roman pots was purpose-built by the CERN Central Workshops and used in the measurement of the total cross-section of proton-proton inter-actions in the ISR.

Roman pots are located as close to the beamline as possible, to capture the accelerated particles which scatter by very small angles.