High energy density physics issues related to Future Circular Collider

Abstract

A design study for a post-Large Hadron Collider accelerator named, Future Circular Collider (FCC), is being carried out by the International Scientific Community. A complete design report is expected to be ready by spring 2018. The FCC will accelerate two counter rotating beams of 50 TeV protons in a tunnel having a length (circumference) of 100 km. Each beam will be comprised of 10 600 proton bunches, with each bunch having an intensity of 1011 protons. The bunch length is of 0.5 ns, and two neighboring bunches are separated by 25 ns. Although there is an option for 5 ns bunch separation as well, in the present studies, we consider the former case only. The total energy stored in each FCC beam is about 8.5 GJ, which is equivalent to the kinetic energy of Airbus 380 (560 t) flying at a speed of 850 km/h. Machine protection is a very important issue while operating with such powerful beams. It is important to have an estimate of the damage caused to the equipment and accelerator components due to the accidental release of a partial or total beam at a given point. For this purpose, we carried out numerical simulations of full impact of one FCC beam on an extended solid copper target. These simulations have been done employing an energy deposition code, FLUKA, and a two-dimensional hydrodynamic code, BIG2, iteratively. This study shows that although the static range of a single FCC proton and its shower is about 1.5 m in solid copper, the entire beam will penetrate around 350 m into the target. This substantial increase in the range is due to the hydrodynamic tunneling of the beam. Our calculations also show that a large part of the target will be converted into high energy density matter including warm dense matter and strongly coupled plasmas.