HL-LHC

A person in a face mask and construction clothing adjusts the light on their hardhat stands in a gray tunnel near equipment. Behind, a large light shines.

A CERN photographer and videographer writes about his experiences documenting the ongoing upgrade that will turn the Large Hadron Collider into the High-Luminosity LHC.

The U.S. Department of Energy has given the U.S. High-Luminosity Large Hadron Collider Accelerator Upgrade Project approval to move full-speed-ahead in building and delivering components for the HL-LHC, specifically, cutting-edge magnets and accelerator cavities that will enable more rapid-fire collisions at the collider. The collider upgrades will allow physicists to study particles such as the Higgs boson in greater detail and reveal rare new physics phenomena. The U.S. collaborators on the project may now move into production mode.

Later this decade, the Large Hadron Collider will be upgraded to the High-Luminosity LHC. What does “luminosity” mean in particle physics, and why measure it instead of collisions?

From CERN, Jan. 26, 2021: This week marks the 50th anniversary of the first proton collisions in CERN’s Intersecting Storage Rings, the first hadron collider ever built. To celebrate, see hadron colliders of the last half-century — including the Tevatron and the Large Hadron Collider — through a historical lens, with an eye toward the quest for high luminosity and new energy frontiers.

From CERN Courier, Jan. 13, 2021: The US LHC Accelerator Upgrade Project, led by Fermilab scientist Giorgio Apollinari, is now entering the production phase in the construction of magnets for the upcoming High-Luminosity LHC, an upgrade of the current Large Hadron Collider. U.S. labs are building magnets that will focus beams near the ATLAS and CMS particle detectors.