FCC Week report
The 2018 FCC Week (Future Circular Collider), jointly organised by CERN, NIKHEF and the University of Twente (NL), brought together about 500 scientists and engineers in Amsterdam to review the progress in the various domains of the study.
The FCC study was launched in 2014, as a response to the European Strategy meeting for particle physics, to prepare a global vision for the post-LHC era. Growing experimental evidence tells us rather clearly that there is more in the Universe than just the particles and the interactions that are described by the Standard Model. The compelling questions in modern physics call for a rigorous and diverse scientific program, with energy and intensity frontier accelerators being a fundamental component.
A 100 km circumference tunnel, hosting different collider modes (proton-proton, lepton-lepton and proton-lepton) could address many of the open questions. During the FCC week, the unique physics opportunities of each machine and their complementarity were reviewed. The FCC complex could offer a leap into completely uncharted territory from mind-boggling e+e- statistics of 5.1012 Z decays (in FCC-ee) all the way up to offering proton-proton collision energies of 100 TeV in a future proton collider (FCC-hh). Further opportunities, adding to the diversity of the research program that FCC offers, include heavy-ion collisions, lepton-hadron collisions (FCC-he) and fixed target experiments. Finally, the FCC study also explores a possible energy upgrade of the LHC using the new 16 T magnets in the existing tunnel (HE-LHC).
The past five years, since the FCC kick-off meeting in Geneva, have seen rapid progress in R&D across the domains of this study, and a growing international community has become inspired by the FCC’s audacious goals and technological opportunities. FCC week 2018 boasted a rich and intense scientific program with some 260 presentations and more than 80 posters confirming the attractiveness of this project for the global scientific community. The study covers a wide range of topics from accelerator and experiment design to special technologies and the required infrastructure. The collaboration aims at technological breakthroughs and innovative solutions that will confirm the feasibility and reliability of FCC, in order to match the long-term needs of global high-energy physics community.
Significant progress was presented in the machine parameter optimisation and the detector design both for FCC-ee and FCC-hh. For the lepton collider, a detector inspired by the Compact Linear Collider (CLIC), with an all-silicon tracker and a 3D-imaging calorimeter, and an alternative novel detector approach, called International Detector for Electron-positron Accelerator, or simply “IDEA”, combine different philosophies with bold technologies. Further work, including test beam sessions foreseen at CERN in summer 2018, is in progress to optimise the IDEA design. Similarly, the seven-fold energy increase at the FCC-hh, compared to the LHC, impacts the detector design for measuring tracks and momenta of the particles that fly out of the collision. This impact is not only on the design of the various detectors for tracking and calorimetry and their readout, but also on the magnet system as the key ingredient for bending the charged particles.
The different environment of the FCC compared to the LHC call for a number of special technologies that will allow a reliable and sustainable operation. Superconductivity remains at the core of the study for future high-energy colliders. Two of the major technological challenges for an energy-frontier machine are the development of more powerful dipole magnets (16 T, which is twice that of the LHC) and a new generation of superconductors able to meet the FCC requirements. CERN has launched a 16 T magnet program and an ambitious FCC conductor development program with research institutes and industry distributed around the world. Another key technology for FCC is advanced superconducting radio-frequency (RF) cavities. A series of cavity designs comprising single-cell and four-cell 400 MHz and five-cell 800 MHz cavities are being developed, in collaboration with LNL/INFN and JLAB, to cover the different operation energies foreseen for FCC-ee. Recent progress in superconducting RF cavities at CERN has been fascinating, and a concrete R&D program is under way. Moreover, new injection and extraction systems, kickers and collimators to control the beam, powerful vacuum system and efficient cryogenics are but a few examples where R&D lines have been established in the framework of the FCC study and the prototypes are tested in different labs all around the world.
Finally, the third version of the “FCC Innovation Award”, was presented during the FCC week 2018, reflecting the innovative spirit of the study in dealing with the challenges of a post-LHC particle collider. The award acknowledge students’ achievements and ensures more opportunities for the young members of the collaboration to network and share their results as members of an international league of experts. The number of presentations and the large participation of young scientists demonstrate that the FCC collaboration offers unique training and networking opportunities.
Together with 120 research institutes and industries from all over the world, the study develops key technologies to ensure the feasibility – both operational and financial – of such a large-scale research infrastructure in the heart of Europe. Global coordination is needed given the breadth of these questions and the scale and complexity of these machines. The FCC study successfully launched new collaborations, to optimise the available resources, exploit the available opportunities for training the new generation and strengthening industries that are an integral part of the ongoing R&D.
The EU supports the design of future energy and intensity frontier colliders through the EuroCirCol Horizon 2020 infrastructure development project. Moreover, the EASITrain Marie Curie training network covers three key technologies for FCC, namely superconducting wires, superconducting thin films and cryogenic refrigeration, and provides a fertile environment where young researchers and experts from industry and research centres can develop innovative solutions that will allow large-scale applications of this alluring technology.
All in all, the FCC week 2018 offered a chance to review the most exciting technological and scientific advances of the past years and prepare the ground for the FCC Conceptual Design Report, set to be published by the end of 2018, in time for the next update of the European charter in high-energy physics.
Mark your calendars for the FCC CDR presentation in January 2019 in Paris and follow our website for more news: fcc.web.cern.ch
