The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Switzerland will soon be able to collide ten times the amount of atoms it does now. Well, in a decade or so…
In order to increase the amount of particles the LHC will be able to smash, the device will have to undergo a bit of a facelift called a High-Luminosity LHC upgrade. The upgrade has been scheduled to be completed by 2025, and in essence, the more collisions the scientists can create, the more results they have to work with.
“The High-Luminosity LHC will increase the luminosity by a factor of 10, delivering 10 times more collisions than the LHC would do over the same period of time. It will therefore provide more accurate measurements of fundamental particles and enable physicists to observe rare processes that occur below the current sensitivity level of the LHC,” CERN, the organisation that is responsible for LHC, said.
CERN Director General Rolf Heuer explained that the LHC already delivers proton collisions at the highest energy ever. “The High-Luminosity LHC will produce collisions 10 times more rapidly, increasing our discovery potential and transforming the LHC into a machine for precision studies: the natural next step for the high energy frontier.”
According to CERN, the increase in luminosity means that scientists will be able to study things like the Higgs boson in greater detail – and even find new phenomena. With the upgrades completed, the LHC will be able to produce 15 million Higgs bosons per year compared to the 1.2 million in total created at the LHC between 2011 and 2012.
“We have to innovate in many fields, developing cutting-edge technologies for magnets, the optics of the accelerator, superconducting radiofrequency cavities, and superconducting links,” explained Lucio Rossi, Head of the High-Luminosity LHC project.
[Image – CERN]
