The Large Hadron Collider Project

Abstract

This chapter provides a brief overview of Large Hadron Collider (LHC), and discusses its technological challenges. The LHC, approved by the CERN Council in December 1994, is the premiere research tool at the energy frontier of particle physics. The LHC is a unique facility for basic research, providing the world's highest energies to probe the mysteries of matter and the forces that control it. The machine is located in the existing 27 km circumference tunnel that presently houses the Large Electron Positron collider (LEP). It provides proton-proton collisions with a centre of mass energy of 14 TeV and an unprecedented luminosity of 1034cm -2 s-1. It is also capable of providing heavy ion collisions with a luminosity of 1027 cm -2s -1 using the existing CERN heavy ion source. Space constraints as well as cost considerations dictate a novel two-in-one design of the main magnetic elements, where the two beam channels are incorporated into a single magnetic structure with the two apertures separated by only 194 mm. The main technical challenge of the project is the exploitation of applied superconductivity and large capacity helium cryogenics on an unprecedented scale, to develop them well behind the present state of the art and to integrate them in a reliable way into an accelerator environment.