future colliders

The P5 panel’s recent recommendation of “our muon shot”, states that a muon accelerator program would fit with the U.S.’s ambition to host a major international collider facility. With the development, it would probe an understanding of the fundamental nature of the universe and offer substantial benefits when it comes to training the next generation of scientists.

What is the future of muon colliders? Particle physicists are seeing less challenges in their development than ten years go and are pushing for a muon collider as the P5 report comes out this fall.

What does it take to envision and build a seemingly impossible particle accelerator? The results of these discussions will shape the next 100 years of particle physics research.

From Science, Oct. 2, 2020: As U.S. particle physicists start to drum up new ideas for the next decade in a yearlong Snowmass process they have no single big project to push for (or against). Physicists have just started to build the current plan’s centerpiece: The Long-Baseline Neutrino Facility at Fermilab will shoot particles through 1,300 kilometers of rock to the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment in South Dakota. Fermilab Deputy Director of Research Joe Lykken and Fermilab scientist Vladimir Shiltsev comment on other possible pursuits in high-energy physics.

Fermilab scientists have broken their own world record for an accelerator magnet. In June, their demonstrator steering dipole magnet achieved a 14.5-tesla field, surpassing the field strength of their 14.1-tesla magnet, which set a record in 2019. This magnet test shows that scientists and engineers can address the demanding requirements for a future particle collider under discussion in the particle physics community.

From Nature Physics, April 2020: Fermilab scientist Pushpa Bhat and her University of Melbourne scientist Geoffrey Taylor discuss particle physics experiments in the United States and Asia and how interest in the development of next-generation colliders has been rekindled.

From Cosmos, Dec. 12, 2016: Particle physics is petrolhead science – a particle-revving, high-octane demolition derby near the speed of light. Cathal O’Connell looks ahead to new ‘Higgs factories’ on teraelectronvolt, megawatt and gigadollar scales.