LHeC

The baseline design of the LHeC consists in two superconducting linear particle accelerators ("linacs") each about 1 km long, arranged in a racetrack configuration tangential to the LHC. Each linac provides about 10 GeV acceleration, therefore the electrons makes three turns in the racetrack reaching an energy of about 60 GeV before colliding with the 7 TeV protons or 2.7 TeV lead ions. A unique feature of the design is the optimization for a particularly low power consumption, which would be achieved by decelerating the electron beam after the collision and gaining back nearly all its energy into the radio-frequency cavities of the linacs, a principle termed "energy recovery". Currently, preparations of an international collaboration with CERN are ongoing for developing superconducting accelerator cavities, at the appropriate frequency of 802 MHz. In parallel a design study for an energy recovery linac test platform is being pursued at CERN. Related to the proton and heavy-ion physics of the LHC, the physics program and a detector for the LHeC are also under study. For maximum use of the operation time and resources of the LHC complex at CERN it is envisaged that electron-proton and proton-proton data are taken simultaneously. The LHeC electron beam may be combined with a multi-10-TeV proton beam in the far future, which has been under consideration in a worldwide study at CERN since 2013.

LHeC would be an electron–ion collider, similar to other systems planned at other particle physics laboratories, although the present design would not include polarized protons.

• "The Large Hadron-Electron Collider at the HL-LHC", 2020 update of the 2012 conceptual design report
• "Electrons at the LHC: a new beginning", CERN Courier, June 2014
• "A Large Hadron Electron Collider at CERN: Report on the Physics and Design Concepts for Machine and Detector", Journal of Physics G: Nuclear and Particle Physics, 2012
• "Electrons for the LHC", CERN Courier, April 2012