The Future Circular Collider (FCC) at CERN

Abstract

With the LHC about to start its last data-taking period before being upgraded to the High-Luminosity LHC, it is time for the international high energy physics community to define the future of collider particle physics. The European Strategy for Particle Physics highlights an electron-positron Higgs boson factory as the main priority and as a first step towards a very high-energy future hadron collider. A staged Future Circular Collider (FCC), consisting of a luminosity-frontier highest-energy electron-positron collider (FCC-ee) followed by an energy-frontier hadron collider (FCC-hh), promises the most far-reaching physics program for the post-LHC era. FCC-ee is a precision instrument to study the Z, W, Higgs and top particles, and offers unprecedented sensitivity to signs of new physics. Most of the FCC-ee infrastructure can later be reused for the subsequent hadron collider, FCC-hh. The FCC-hh provides proton-proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 100 TeV and can directly produce new particles with masses of up to several tens of TeV. This collider will also measure the Higgs self-coupling and explore the dynamics of electroweak symmetry breaking. Thermal dark matter candidates will be either discovered or conclusively ruled out by FCC-hh. Heavy-ion collisions and ep collisions (FCC-eh) further contribute to the breadth of the overall FCC program. The integrated FCC infrastructure will serve the particle physics community through the end of the 21st century. This presentation summarizes the feasibility of such a plan, possible implementation and conceptual designs of FCC-ee and FCC-hh, as well as physics potential.