Proton Colliders at the Energy Frontier

TL;DR

This paper reviews the history and future prospects of proton colliders at the energy frontier, discussing current and proposed colliders like the LHC, FCC, SppC, and HE-LHC, highlighting technological challenges and potential discoveries.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of the development, current status, and future plans for high-energy proton colliders, including innovative magnet technologies and design considerations.

Findings

Future colliders aim for 100 TeV energy levels.

Different magnet technologies are under investigation for next-generation colliders.

Synchrotron radiation becomes a significant factor in collider design.

Abstract

Since the CERN ISR, hadron colliders have defined the energy frontier. Noteworthy are the conversion of the Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) into a proton-antiproton collider, the Tevatron collider, as well as the abandoned SSC in the United States. Hadron colliders are likely to determine the pace of particle-physics progress also during the next hundred years. Discoveries at past hadron colliders were essential for establishing the so-called Standard Model of particle physics. The world's present flagship collider, the LHC, including its high-luminosity upgrade HL-LHC, is set to operate through the second half of the 2030's. Further increases of the energy reach during the 21st century require another, still more powerful hadron collider. Three options for a next hadron collider are presently under investigation. The Future Circular Collider (FCC) study, hosted by CERN, is designing a 100 TeV collider, to be installed inside a new 100 km tunnel in the Lake Geneva basin. A similar 100 km collider, called SppC, is being pursued by CAS-IHEP in China. In either machine, for the first time in hadron storage rings, synchrotron radiation damping will be significant. In parallel, the synchrotron-radiation power emitted inside the cold magnets becomes an important design constraint. One important difference between FCC and SppC is the magnet technology. FCC uses 16 Tesla magnets based on Nb3Sn superconductor, while SppC magnets shall be realized with cables made from iron-based high-temperature superconductor. Initially the SppC magnets are assumed to provide a more moderate dipole field of 12 T, but they can later be pushed to a final ultimate field of 24 T. A third collider presently under study is the High-Energy LHC (HE-LHC), which is a higher energy collider in the existing LHC tunnel, exploiting the FCC magnet technology in order to double the LHC energy at significantly higher luminosity.