The CLIC Programme: Towards a Staged e+e- Linear Collider Exploring the Terascale : CLIC Conceptual Design Report

TL;DR

The CLIC project proposes a staged high-energy e+e- linear collider to explore the Terascale, enabling precise measurements of the Higgs, top, and gauge sectors, and searching for new physics beyond the Standard Model.

Contribution

This report introduces the CLIC conceptual design, including its staged construction, accelerator technology, and physics potential, highlighting its role in complementing the LHC for fundamental physics exploration.

Findings

Designed for staged operation from a few hundred GeV to 3 TeV

Provides high-precision measurements of Higgs, top, and gauge bosons

Estimates of costs, power consumption, and physics reach

Abstract

This report describes the exploration of fundamental questions in particle physics at the energy frontier with a future TeV-scale e+e- linear collider based on the Compact Linear Collider (CLIC) two-beam acceleration technology. A high-luminosity high-energy e+e- collider allows for the exploration of Standard Model physics, such as precise measurements of the Higgs, top and gauge sectors, as well as for a multitude of searches for New Physics, either through direct discovery or indirectly, via high-precision observables. Given the current state of knowledge, following the observation of a 125 GeV Higgs-like particle at the LHC, and pending further LHC results at 8 TeV and 14 TeV, a linear e+e- collider built and operated in centre-of-mass energy stages from a few-hundred GeV up to a few TeV will be an ideal physics exploration tool, complementing the LHC. In this document, an overview of the physics potential of CLIC is given. Two example scenarios are presented for a CLIC accelerator built in three main stages of 500 GeV, 1.4 (1.5) TeV, and 3 TeV, together with operating schemes that will make full use of the machine capacity to explore the physics. The accelerator design, construction, and performance are presented, as well as the layout and performance of the experiments. The proposed staging example is accompanied by cost estimates of the accelerator and detectors and by estimates of operating parameters, such as power consumption. The resulting physics potential and measurement precisions are illustrated through detector simulations under realistic beam conditions.