The LHCspin project

TL;DR

LHCspin plans to upgrade the LHCb experiment with a polarized gas target, enabling new physics studies at unprecedented energies and polarization states, thus expanding the collider's research capabilities.

Contribution

The project introduces a novel polarized target system at LHCb, allowing simultaneous unpolarized and polarized collisions at high energies for the first time.

Findings

First implementation of a polarized gas target at LHCb.

Enables polarized beam-target collision studies at $\, ext{~}100$ GeV.

Potential to explore new physics regimes.

Abstract

LHCspin aims to upgrade the recently installed unpolarized gas target (SMOG2) in front of the LHCb spectrometer to a polarised one. This task requires, in the next few years, innovative solutions and cutting-edge technologies, and will allow the exploration of a unique kinematic regime and new reaction processes. With the instrumentation of the proposed target system, LHCb will become the first experiment delivering simultaneously unpolarized beam-beam at $\sqrt{s}$ = 14 TeV, and unpolarized and polarized beam-target collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}~\sim$ 100 GeV. LHCspin could open new physics frontiers exploiting the potential of the most powerful collider and one of the most advanced detectors.