The Very Large Hadron Collider (VLHC) was a proposed future
hadron
In particle physics, a hadron is a composite subatomic particle made of two or more quarks held together by the strong nuclear force. Pronounced , the name is derived . They are analogous to molecules, which are held together by the electri ...
collider
A collider is a type of particle accelerator that brings two opposing particle beams together such that the particles collide. Compared to other particle accelerators in which the moving particles collide with a stationary matter target, collid ...
planned to be located at
Fermilab
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), located in Batavia, Illinois, near Chicago, is a United States Department of Energy United States Department of Energy National Labs, national laboratory specializing in high-energy particle phys ...
. The VLHC was planned to be located in a ring, using the
Tevatron
The Tevatron was a circular particle accelerator (active until 2011) in the United States, at the Fermilab, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (called ''Fermilab''), east of Batavia, Illinois, and was the highest energy particle collider unt ...
as an injector. The VLHC would run in two stages, initially the Stage-1 VLHC would have a collision energy of 40 TeV, and a luminosity of at least 1⋅10
34 cm
−2⋅s
−1 (matching or surpassing the
LHC
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world's largest and highest-energy particle accelerator. It was built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) between 1998 and 2008, in collaboration with over 10,000 scientists, and ...
design luminosity, however the LHC has now surpassed this).
After running at Stage-1 for a period of time the VLHC was planned to run at Stage-2, with the
quadrupole magnet
Quadrupole magnets, abbreviated as Q-magnets, consist of groups of four magnets laid out so that in the planar multipole expansion of the field, the dipole terms cancel and where the lowest significant terms in the field equations are quadrupole. ...
s used for bending the beam being replaced by magnets that can reach higher peak magnetic fields, allowing a collision energy of up to 175 TeV and other improvements, including raising the luminosity to at least 2⋅10
34 cm
−2⋅s
−1.
Given that such a performance increase necessitates a correspondingly large increase in size, cost, and power requirements, a significant amount of international collaboration over a period of decades would be required to construct such a collider.
See also
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Particle physics
Particle physics or high-energy physics is the study of Elementary particle, fundamental particles and fundamental interaction, forces that constitute matter and radiation. The field also studies combinations of elementary particles up to the s ...
*
Superconducting Super Collider
The Superconducting Super Collider (SSC), nicknamed Desertron, was a particle accelerator complex under construction from 1991 to 1993 near Waxahachie, Texas, United States.
Its planned ring circumference was with an energy of 20 TeV per proto ...
- planned ring circumference of . Canceled after of tunnel had been bored and about billion spent.
*
High Luminosity Large Hadron Collider
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Future Circular Collider
References
External links
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VLHC Design Materials
Particle physics facilities
Proposed particle accelerators
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Fermilab