5th report from the LHC performance workshop

The morning session on Friday 10 February - the final day of the workshop - saw further examination of the challenges of the High Luminosity LHC and included a look at the state of R&D for the new magnets required for the high luminosity interaction regions.

There was then an entertaining look at even more distant future. Possible future projects under consideration include the Large Hadron electron Collider (LHeC) which foresees colliding 60 GeV electrons with 7 TeV protons, and the High Energy LHC (HE-LHC) in which the beam energy of the LHC is increased from 7 to 16.5 TeV. Serious technological challenges exist for both these options.

In the afternoon Steve Myers, CERN's Director for Accelerators and Technology, presented a summary of the workshop recommendations. In brief, the LHC should operate at 4 TeV in 2012 with the key priorities being: delivering enough luminosity to ATLAS and CMS to allow them to independently discover or exclude the Higgs; the proton-Lead ion run; and machine development programme that targets operation after the long technical shutdown. Over 15 fb^-1 luminosity is the necessary and apparently achievable target. Progress should be carefully monitored with 2 check points during the year - a run extension was not ruled out if necessary to meet the target integrated luminosity. A detailed start-up strategy is to be developed.

by Bulletin's correspondent from Chamonix