https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-021-09967-z
Regular Article - Experimental Physics
An experiment for electron-hadron scattering at the LHC
1
CERN, Esplanade des particules 1, 1211, Geneva 23, Switzerland
2
University of Liverpool, Oxford Street, L69 7ZE, Liverpool, UK
3
Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY), Notkestr. 85, 22769, Hamburg, Germany
4
Instituto Galego de Física de Altas Enerxías IGFAE, Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, 15782, Santiago de Compostela, Galicia, Spain
5
JLab, Newport News, VA, USA
6
Max-Planck-Institut für Physik, Föhringer Ring 6, 80805, Munich, Germany
7
Department of Physics, The University of Oxford, OX1 3PU, Oxford, UK
8
Bursa Uludag University, Bursa, Turkey
9
School of Physics and Institute for Collider Particle Physics, University of the Witwatersrand, 2050, Johannesburg, Wits, South Africa
10
iThemba LABS, National Research Foundation, PO Box 722, 7129, Somerset West, South Africa
11
Instituto Superior Técnico (IST), Universidade de Lisboa, Av. Rovisco Pais 1, 1049-001, Lisbon, Portugal
12
LIP, Av. Prof. Gama Pinto, 2, 1649-003, Lisbon, Portugal
13
School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK
14
Université Catholique de Louvain, Centre for Cosmology, Particle Physics and Phenomenology, 1348, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium
15
Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN), Sezione di Bologna, Bologna, Italy
16
Graduate School of Science, Kobe University, Rokkodai-cho 1-1, Nada, 657-8501, Kobe, Japan
Received:
23
June
2021
Accepted:
21
December
2021
Published online:
15
January
2022
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.
© The Author(s) 2022
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Funded by SCOAP3. SCOAP3 supports the goals of the International Year of Basic Sciences for Sustainable Development.
