The joint HiLumi LHC-LARP collaboration held its 3rd annual meeting between 11-15 November 2013, hosted by the Cockcroft Institute and Daresbury Laboratory. The international meeting brought together 180 physicists and engineers from as far as Japan and America to address the luminosity upgrade of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, which will provide an unprecedented rate of proton-proton collisions to the four LHC experiments in the 2020s. The meeting addressed key issues of accelerator design, scheduling and the exploitation of novel technologies to deliver the challenging project goals.
The week began with the kick-off meeting of the LHC upgrade project, which was attended by the CERN directorate, the senior management of STFC and senior management of US DoE (Dr Bruce Strauss). After the welcome from the Cockcroft Institute Director Prof Swapan Chattopadhyay, the STFC executive-director for Programmes Prof Grahame Blair presented the UK accelerator landscape. This was followed by a talk on the vision of CERN for the field by Prof Sergio Bertolucci, an overview of the LHC luminosity upgrade by its leader, Prof Lucio Rossi, and the status of the associated detector upgrades, again by Prof Sergio Bertolucci. Talks were then given on the Japanese and US effort for the LHC upgrades by the KEK laboratory director Prof Atsuto Suzuki and Prof Stuart Henderson of Fermilab respectively. Finally there was a closing talk on the CERN injector complex and machine upgrades by the incoming CERN director of accelerators Prof Frederick Bordry. The LHC upgrade kick-off meeting ended with a celebratory cocktail in the Daresbury atrium and an evening dinner hosted by Prof Rossi on behalf of CERN and Hi-Lumi collaboration and Prof Chattopadhyay on behalf of the Cockcroft Institute.
The main workshop started on the Tuesday morning with a day of plenary talks addressing various aspects of the LHC machine upgrade. The workshop photograph was taken at morning coffee in the Cockcroft Institute atrium, while the international delegates chatted over coffee and biscuits, and the Daresbury boardroom hosted the collaboration board in the late afternoon. This was followed by the collaboration board dinner at the famous Old Trafford football stadium. The Wednesday was filled with parallel sessions, up to five at one time scattered over the site, as the various work packages focused on a day of intense scientific talks and discussion. After this strenuous day the delegates enjoyed the workshop dinner at Ruthin Castle in Wales, with a medieval banquet and entertainment providing the backdrop for further discussion and relaxation. The final day of the main workshop started with parallel sessions till morning coffee and then proceeded into summary and overview plenary talks. The workshop was brought to a close with a discussion of novel ‘crab kissing’ schemes, reminding all the delegates of the need to work closely with the experiments of the upgraded LHC machine. Friday was spent on more focused discussion in smaller satellite meetings, including a mini-workshop devoted to the special simulation challenges of high-energy proton beam collimation.
Prof Lucio presenting the plans for the high luminosity era of the LHC in the Tuesday morning plenary session.
The intense but enjoyable long week provided the perfect environment for productive scientific discussion and collaboration building. Many thanks to the local and CERN organisers who ensured a smooth running of the workshop.
http://hilumilhc.web.cern.ch/HiLumiLHC/index.html (link opens in a new window)
http://www.uslarp.org/ (link opens in a new window)
For further details please contact Dr Rob Appleby (robert.appleby@cockcroft.ac.uk)
