The high luminosity interaction region for a ring–ring Large Hadron Electron Collider

Abstract

The Large Hadron Electron Collider (LHeC) project is a proposal for high luminosity TeV-scale electron–proton (ep) collisions at the LHC. The LHeC Conceptual Design Report presented an early overview of the machine, including an electron linac solution and a solution involving a 60 GeV electron storage ring. Here we present a new complete solution for the collision insertion of this electron ring, incorporating all constraints including those imposed by the LHC and, for the first time, proving the feasibility of ep collisions at a luminosity of ∼1033 cm−2s−1 in the LHC era. The solution presented offers high luminosity while maintaining the large detector coverage required by the particle physics programme. This negates the earlier need for two separate interaction region designs, one optimized for high luminosity at the cost of detector coverage, and the other for lower luminosity but higher coverage. Synchrotron radiation emission is also a major factor in electron accelerator design, and studies are presented showing the feasibility of the design in this regard. The design is found to be technically viable, solving the problem of TeV-scale, high luminosity and high coverage ep collisions at a ring–ring LHeC.