China launched a 640-million-yuan (US$77.4 million) project to retool a Beijing-based electron-positron accelerator, the country's biggest scientific experimental device, in a bid to keep its forward role in the world's high-energy physics field.

The most advanced colliding technology is to be used to renovate the Beijing Electron-Positron Collider (BEPC) built in 1988 at the Institute of High Energy Physics under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).

BEPC used to be the world's eighth biggest high-energy accelerator experiment center.

To add a new storage ring to the existing ring of the collider to spur the electron and positron beams' movement and collision in the colliding zone, the retooled collider will have 97 pairs of electron beams as against the original one pair, and its luminosity, a leading parameter, be 100 times stronger than that of the original BEPC.

Meanwhile, scientists will make improvements to a probing device, the Beijing Spectron Meter, to greatly raise its measuring accuracy and lessen errors, so that it will be adapted to the operation requirements of the retooled collider.

The upgrading will help the BEPC attain its forward status as one of the most ideal colliding experiment facilities of its kind.

The electron-positron collider is now applied to a range of research topics covering material, pharmaceutical, semi-conductor and micro-electronic researches.

The BEPC and Beijing Spectron Meter have enabled Chinese scientists to make significant progress over the past 15 years since 1988 in the field of high-energy physics with serial world-class research findings.

Source: Xinhua