CERN prepares for Future Circular Collider Study
Fig, left: Participants of the Future Circular Collider kick-off Meeting, University of Geneva, Switzerland Image credit: CERN.
Fig2, right: Sketch of a future 80 to 100-km long tunnel in the Geneva area, allowing for a 100-TeV energy-frontier proton collider and also, as possible intermediate step, a high-luminosity e+e- Higgs factory. Image credit: CERN.
More than 350 world experts in accelerators and particle physics, including several laboratory directors, came together at the University of Geneva for 4 days from 12 to 15 February 2014, to launch a future circular collider (FCC) study, based on a new 80 to 100-km circular tunnel.
The FCC study scope comprises a frontier 100-TeV proton (and heavy-ion) collider [formerly called VHE-LHC], a high-luminosity e+e- (H, Z, W, and ttbar) factory as potential intermediate step [formerly called TLEP], and also a hadron-lepton collider option [formerly called VLHeC]. The goal of the study is to deliver a Conceptual Design Report (CDR) together with a cost review at the time of the next European Strategy Update (2018).
The goals of the kick-off meeting were to introduce the FCC study, to discuss study scope and organization, as well to prepare and to establish global collaborations.
After two days of plenary sessions, which surveyed the physics case, scope, plan, international situation and design starting points of the FCC, seven parallel sessions provided space for feedback, numerous additional presentations and lively international discussions. Worldwide collaboration in all areas – physics, experiments and accelerators – was found to be essential to reach the level for a CDR by 2018. Key R&D areas for the FCC, such as superconducting high-field magnets and Superconducting Radio-Frequency systems (SRF), are of general interest and relevant for many other applications. Significant R&D investments in these areas have been made over the past decade(s) and are still in progress, for example, in the framework of the LHC and High-Luminosity LHC.
Institutes around the world are now invited to join the global FCC effort and to submit non-committing written “expressions of interest” with regard to specific contributions by the end of May 2014.
