An experiment for electron-hadron scattering at the LHC

Novel considerations are presented on the physics, apparatus and accelerator designs for a future, luminous, energy frontier electron-hadron (eh) scattering experiment at the LHC in the thirties for which key physics topics and their relation to the hadron-hadron HL-LHC physics programme are discussed. Demands are derived set by these physics topics on the design of the LHeC detector, a corresponding update of which is described. Optimisations on the accelerator design, especially the interaction region (IR), are presented. Initial accelerator considerations indicate that a common IR is possible to be built which alternately could serve eh and hh collisions while other experiments would stay on hh in either condition. A forward-backward symmetrised option of the LHeC detector is sketched which would permit extending the LHeC physics programme to also include aspects of hadron-hadron physics. The vision of a joint eh and hh physics experiment is shown to open new prospects for solving fundamental problems of high energy heavy-ion physics including the partonic structure of nuclei and the emergence of hydrodynamics in quantum field theory while the genuine TeV scale DIS physics is of unprecedented rank.

Automated summary

This paper presents novel considerations on the physics, apparatus and accelerator designs for a future luminous, energy frontier electron-hadron scattering experiment at the LHC in the thirties. It discusses the key physics topics and their relation to the hadron-hadron HL-LHC physics programme. The paper derives demands on the design of the LHeC detector set by these physics topics and describes a corresponding update. It also presents optimizations on the accelerator design, particularly the interaction region (IR). Additionally, the paper sketches a forward-backward symmetrized option of the LHeC detector that would allow extending the LHeC physics programme to include aspects of hadron-hadron physics.