The JADE experiment was one of the experiments located at the PETRA $e^+e^-$ storage ring at DESY in Hamburg, Germany. It has been proposed in 1976 (see proposal) and already in 1979 started the data taking. The JADE detector comprised novel technologies like accurate tracking of charged particles in the central "jet chamber" with fast multi-hit electronics, measurement and identification of photons, electrons and muons over wide regions of phase-space, and maximal hermeticity and symmetry of the detector systems. A more detailed desctiption of the detector can be found in B.Naroska, $e^+ e-$ Physics with the JADE Detector at PETRA, Phys.Rept. 148 (1987) 67.
The experiment took data between 1979 and 1986 in the center-of-mass range between $12$ and $46.6 \rm GeV$. After the end of the data taking period, the results from the JADE experiments were published within a regular collaboration structure between 1979 and 1991. Scientific results of the JADE collaboration were the (co-)discovery of the gluon, establishment of jet-physics and tests of Quantum-Chromodynamics, establishment of string-hadronisation, electro-weak precision tests, two-photon physics and searches for New Physics like Super-Symmetry, free quarks and the - at that time still undiscovered - top-quark.
Since 1997 a group at the University of Aachen, now located at the MPI in Munich, started to re-analyze the preserved data, digitalize the documentation and revive the JADE software. New theoretical calculations developed during and after the running of the LEP experiments were applied to the data taken between $12$ and $46.6 \rm GeV$ and has allowed to test them in that energy range. With the preserved date the studies of the hadronic final state in the $e^+e^-$ annihilations and precise determinations of $\alpha_s$ were done.
As of 2020 the JADE data remains unsuperseded in its energy range. Therefore, the preserved JADE data provides a unique opportunity to test the modern and future theory predictions for the $e^+e^-$ physics in this unique energy range using the most recent developments in the theory, phenomenology and data analysis techniques.