An experiment for electron-hadron scattering at the LHC

Novel considerations are presented on the physics, apparatus and accelerator designs for a future, luminous, energy frontier electron-hadron (eh) scattering experiment at the LHC in the thirties for which key physics topics and their relation to the hadron-hadron HL-LHC physics programme are discussed. Demands are derived set by these physics topics on the design of the LHeC detector, a corresponding update of which is described. Optimisations on the accelerator design, especially the interaction region (IR), are presented. Initial accelerator considerations indicate that a common IR is possible to be built which alternately could serve eh and hh collisions while other experiments would stay on hh in either condition. A forward-backward symmetrised option of the LHeC detector is sketched which would permit extending the LHeC physics programme to also include aspects of hadron-hadron physics. The vision of a joint eh and hh physics experiment is shown to open new prospects for solving fundamental problems of high energy heavy-ion physics including the partonic structure of nuclei and the emergence of hydrodynamics in quantum field theory while the genuine TeV scale DIS physics is of unprecedented rank.

FCC-ee: physics motivations

Learning from the first twelve years of LHC running, this essay offers a brief journey through the FCC-ee physics programme from refined precision measurements to probes of new physics, highlighting some of the commentaries between the different runs of FCC-ee at various energies as well as the synergies between the two FCC-ee and FCC-hh collider stages.

Exploring requirements and detector solutions for FCC-ee

Circular colliders have the advantage of delivering collisions to multiple interaction points, which allow different detector designs to be studied and optimised—up to four for FCC-ee. On the one hand, the detectors must satisfy the constraints imposed by the invasive interaction region layout. On the other hand, the performance of heavy-flavour tagging, of particle identification, of tracking and particle-flow reconstruction, and of lepton, jet, missing energy and angular resolution, need to match the physics programme and the exquisite statistical precision offered by FCC-ee. During the FCC feasibility study (2021–2025), benchmark physics processes will be used to determine, via appropriate simulations, the requirements on the detector performance or design that must be satisfied to ensure that the systematic uncertainties of the measurements are commensurate with their statistical precision. The usage of the data themselves, in order to reach the challenging goals on the stability and on the alignment of the detector, in particular for the programme at and around the Z peak, will also be studied. In addition, the potential for discovering very weakly coupled new particles, in decays of Z or Higgs bosons, could motivate dedicated detector designs that would increase the efficiency for reconstructing the unusual signatures of such processes. These studies are crucial input to the further optimisation of the two concepts described in the FCC-ee conceptual design report, CLD and IDEA, and to the development of new concepts which might actually prove to be better adapted to the FCC-ee physics programme, or parts thereof.

FCC: Building on the shoulders of giants

The plethora of open questions in particle physics, the new chapter opened by the Higgs boson, and the lack of clear theoretical guidance as to where new theory could lie call for a broad and diverse experimental programme boosting the intensity and energy-frontier. The proposed FCC-integrated programme consisting of a luminosity-frontier highest-energy lepton collider followed by an energy-frontier hadron collider promises the most far-reaching particle physics programme that foreseeable technology can deliver. In this essay, particular emphasis is given to the lessons from the predecessor of the LHC, LEP, which was commissioned in 1989 and finished operation in November 2000.

Particle identification at FCC-ee

Equipping an experiment at FCC-ee with particle identification (PID) capabilities, in particular the ability to distinguish between hadron species, would bring great benefits to the physics programme. Good PID is essential for precise studies in quark flavour physics and is also a great asset for many measurements in tau, top, and Higgs physics. The requirements placed by flavour physics and these other applications are surveyed, with an emphasis on the momentum range over which PID is necessary. Possible solutions are discussed, including classical RICH counters, time-of-flight systems, and dE/dx and cluster counting. Attention is paid to the impact on the global detector design that including PID capabilities would imply.

PANDA Phase One

The Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research (FAIR) in Darmstadt, Germany, provides unique possibilities for a new generation of hadron-, nuclear- and atomic physics experiments. The future antiProton ANnihilations at DArmstadt (PANDA or $$\overline{\mathrm{P}}$$ P ¯ ANDA) experiment at FAIR will offer a broad physics programme, covering different aspects of the strong interaction. Understanding the latter in the non-perturbative regime remains one of the greatest challenges in contemporary physics. The antiproton–nucleon interaction studied with PANDA provides crucial tests in this area. Furthermore, the high-intensity, low-energy domain of PANDA allows for searches for physics beyond the Standard Model, e.g. through high precision symmetry tests. This paper takes into account a staged approach for the detector setup and for the delivered luminosity from the accelerator. The available detector setup at the time of the delivery of the first antiproton beams in the HESR storage ring is referred to as the Phase One setup. The physics programme that is achievable during Phase One is outlined in this paper.

Challenges in Monte Carlo Event Generator Software for High-Luminosity LHC

We review the main software and computing challenges for the Monte Carlo physics event generators used by the LHC experiments, in view of the High-Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC) physics programme. This paper has been prepared by the HEP Software Foundation (HSF) Physics Event Generator Working Group as an input to the LHCC review of HL-LHC computing, which has started in May 2020.