On 5 October, CERN’s director-general, Rolf Heuer, and the minister of education and culture of the Republic of Cyprus, George Demosthenous, signed an agreement under which the Republic of Cyprus will become an associate member state in the pre-stage to membership. Before it comes into force, the agreement has to be ratified by the Parliament of Cyprus.
In the early 1990s, physicists from the Republic of Cyprus took part in the L3 experiment at CERN’s Large Electron Positron collider before joining the CMS collaboration in 1995. A memorandum of understanding was signed between the University of Cyprus and CMS in 1999 under which Cypriot physicists have contributed to the development of the solenoid magnet and of the CMS electromagnetic calorimeter. They are also involved in the physics analyses of the CMS experiment, including certain searches for the Higgs boson and beauty quarks.
The Republic of Cyprus is the third country to accede to the status of associate member state in the pre-stage to membership, following Israel in 2011 and Serbia earlier this year.
