Abstract
Based on current CERN infrastructure, an electron--proton collider is proposed at a centre-of-mass energy of about 9 TeV. A 7 TeV LHC bunch is used as the proton driver to create a plasma wakefield which then accelerates electrons to 3\,TeV, these then colliding with the other 7 TeV LHC proton beam. Although of very high energy, the collider has a modest projected integrated luminosity of $10-100$ pb$^{-1}$. For such a collider, with a centre-of-mass energy 30 times greater than HERA, parton momentum fractions, $x$, down to about $10^{-8}$ are accessible for photon virtualities, $Q^2$, of 1 GeV$^2$. The energy dependence of hadronic cross sections at high energies, such as the the total photon--proton cross section, which has synergy with cosmic-ray physics, can be measured and QCD and the structure of matter better understood in a region where the effects are completely unknown. Searches at high $Q^2$ for physics beyond the Standard Model will be possible, in particular the significantly increased sensitivity to the production of leptoquarks. These and other physics highlights of a very high energy electron--proton collider are outlined.
Highlights
The very high energy electron–proton collider (VHEeP) machine would strongly rely on the use of the LHC beams and the technique of plasma wakefield acceleration to accelerate electrons to 3 TeV over relatively short distances
The concept of proton-driven plasma wakefield acceleration will be tested in the few years in the AWAKE experiment at CERN, with first results expected already this year
While cross sections for standard s-channel physics lead to extremely high luminosity requirements for TeV and beyond energy scales, there are physics questions which can be probed with lower luminosities
Summary
The VHEeP machine would strongly rely on the use of the LHC beams and the technique of plasma wakefield acceleration to accelerate electrons to 3 TeV over relatively short distances Given such an acceleration scheme, the luminosity will be relatively modest with 10−100 pb−1 expected over the lifetime of the collider. With such an increase in centreof-mass energy, the VHEeP collider will probe a new regime in deep inelastic scattering and QCD in general. 5 and 6, the headline physics areas in QCD and beyond the Standard Model are outlined These include measuring the total photon–proton cross section, the deep inelastic scattering cross section at the lowest possible x values and the search for leptoquarks.
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