The High Luminosity Large Hadron Collider – HL-LHC

Abstract

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is one of largest scientific instruments ever built. It has been exploring the new energy frontier since 2010, gathering a global user community of 10,000 scientists. To extend its discovery potential, the LHC requires a major upgrade in the 2020s to increase its luminosity (rate of collisions) by a factor of five beyond its design value, and the integrated luminosity by a factor of ten. Being a highly complex and optimized machine, such an upgrade of the LHC must be carefully studied and requires about 10 years to implement. The novel machine configuration, called High Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC), relies on a number of key innovative technologies, each representing exceptional technological challenges, such as: cutting-edge 11-12 tesla superconducting magnets, very compact superconducting cavities for beam rotation with ultra-precise phase control, new technology for beam collimation and 100-metre-long high-power superconducting links with negligible energy dissipation, very precise 2-Q high current power converter, new surface treatment for e-could suppression, and many others. All these constitute major breakthroughs in accelerator technology. HL-LHC federates efforts, R&D, and construction of a large community in Europe, the USA, Japan, China and Canada, thereby consolidating CERN and LHC as the center of a world-wide collaboration for basic science and technology.