With the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN we entered a new era of research in High Energy physics. During its first years of operation the LHC has been proven very successful, culminating with the discovery of the Higgs boson. To fully take advantage of the potential of the LHC machine to make new discoveries, a series of planned interruptions to regular LHC operation were scheduled already from the start. In these interruptions the energy and the beam intensity should gradually increase. In the stop from 2015 - 2018, the energy was increased from 8 TeV to 13 TeV, and further to 13.6 TeV from 2019 - 2021, where also the beam intensity was increased. According to the current schedule, the energy is to be upgraded to 14 TeV in 2026 - 2028, and the beam intensity will be drastically increased. Already from run 3 that started in 2022, the intensity upgrades will lead to 2-10 times higher collision rates delivered to the experiments (as well as higher radiation doses). This implies that the LHC experiments with Norwegian participation, ATLAS and ALICE, need to enhance their detectors, trigger systems, and computing systems accordingly.
In this proposal we have addressed in a consistent way the infrastructure requirements for exploitation of the LHC luminosity upgrades. This project is partly funding the upgrades of the ATLAS and ALICE experiments and the re-furbishing and expansion of the required e-infrastructure. This secures Norwegian membership in these experiments and our position at several of the internationally recognized frontiers of high energy physics research. It is also a unique opportunity for Norwegian researchers to harvest the outcome of many years of detector R&D, which may result in new detector technologies.
When ready, the HL-LHC will give unprecedented statistics at collision energies never before probed, which promises important new physics insight and possibly new discoveries.
With the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN we entered a new era of research in High Energy physics. During its first years of operation the LHC has been proven very successful, culminating with the discovery of the Higgs boson. To fully take advantage of the potential of the LHC machine to make new discoveries, a series of upgrades is planned. According to the current schedule, the beam intensity is upgraded during two interruptions to regular LHC operation. The first was in 2019-2021, and the second is planned for 2026-2028. The High Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC) running is scheduled to start in 2029 and to last until 2042. Since the intensity upgrades lead to 2-10 times higher collision rates delivered to the experiments (as well as higher radiation doses), the LHC experiments with Norwegian participation, ATLAS and ALICE, need to enhance their detectors, trigger systems, and computing systems accordingly.
In this proposal we have addressed in a consistent way the infrastructure requirements for exploitation of the LHC luminosity upgrades. We apply for funding of the improvements to the ATLAS and ALICE experiments and the re-furbishing and expansion of the required e-infrastructure, thus securing Norwegian membership in these experiments and our position at several of the internationally recognized frontiers of high energy physics research.
It is also a unique opportunity for Norwegian researchers to harvest the outcome of many years of detector R&D, which may result in new detector technologies. When ready, the HL-LHC will give unprecedented statistics at collision energies never before probed, which promises important new physics insight and possibly new discoveries.