Work

Charting the luminosity capabilities of the CERN Large Hadron Collider with various nuclear species

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN has been instrumental in recent advances in experimental high energy physics by colliding beams of protons and heavier nuclei at unprecedented energies. The present heavy-ion programme is based mainly on colliding lead nuclei. For future ion runs, there is strong interest to achieve a significantly higher integrated nucleon–nucleon luminosity, which might be achieved through collisions of species other than Pb. In this paper, we explore the intensity and nucleon–nucleon luminosity projections in the LHC for a selection of ion species ranging from He to Xe, and including Pb as reference. Alternative beam production schemes are investigated as a way to mitigate effects such as space charge that degrade the beam quality in the LHC injectors. In the most optimistic scenarios, we find up to about a factor 4 improvement in integrated nucleon–nucleon luminosity for a typical future one-month run, with respect to the present Pb programme. We also outline a future study programme and experiments to test the assumptions and refine the simulated projections put forward in this article.

Source: Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A Accelerators Spectrometers Detectors and Associated Equipment

DOI: 10.1016/j.nima.2025.171118

Authors: E. Waagaard, R. Bruce, R. Alemany Fernández, H. Bartosik, J.M. Jowett, N. Triantafyllou

Institutions: École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, European Organization for Nuclear Research, GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research

Language: English

Topic: Particle accelerators and beam dynamics

Subfield: Aerospace Engineering

Field: Engineering

Domain: Physical Sciences

Open Access status: hybrid

Estimated APC paid: $2,620

Funder: CERN