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The latest plans for the next generation of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the machine that proved the existence of the Higgs Boson in 2012, have been announced by CERN. The High-Luminosity LHC will provide more accurate measurements of fundamental particles and enable physicists to observe rare processes that occur below the current sensitivity level of the LHC.

More than 230 scientists and engineers worldwide, including from the UK, met this week at CERN to discuss the High-Luminosity LHC – a major upgrade to the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), which will increase the accelerator’s discovery potential from 2025.

After a four year long design study the project is now moving into its second phase, which will see the development of industrial prototypes for various parts of the accelerator. STFC has been actively involved in this initial design phase and has supported UK researchers in developing innovative solutions to a number of Hi-Lumi challenges including innovative crab cavity solutions for high intensity particle colliders.

With this upgrade, the LHC will continue to push the limits of human knowledge, enabling physicists to explore beyond the Standard Model and Brout-Englert-Higgs mechanism.

A number of leading UK physicists involved with the LHC have already voiced their thoughts on what this upgrade will mean for physics.

Tara Shears, Professor of Experimental Particle Physics and University of Liverpool LHCb group lead said:

“HL-LHC will let us turn the spotlight on the universe to see it in really intimate detail. The huge amount of data we're going to gather will reveal the smallest patterns in matter, perhaps even the faintest traces that dark matter or new, exotic particles leave behind. It's our best hope for solving our biggest mysteries with our best particle physics machine.”

Professor Sir Tejinder (Jim) Virdee FRS, one of the leading lights behind the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment at the LHC and part of the physics department at Imperial College London said:

“With the High Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC) we shall be entering a new phase, one that will enable the exploitation of the full potential of the LHC. The accelerator will be upgraded to provide an instantaneous proton-proton collision rate that is roughly ten times higher than originally foreseen.

The higher instantaneous proton-proton collision rate also will require the experiments to be upgraded and some of their parts to be replaced. UK researchers are in the vanguard of vigorous R&D that is ongoing to select and then upgrade/construct new parts of the LHC experiments so as to be ready for physics exploitation by the middle of the next decade. An exciting physics and technological advancement programme lies ahead in which UK scientists are positioned to play a major role, as is currently the case for the analysis of data from the ongoing higher energy run of the LHC.”

Dr Robert Appleby, member of the University of Manchester High Energy Physics group and of the Cockcroft Institute and also spokesperson of HL-LHC-UK, the new UK LHC machine upgrade project at CERN said:

“We are very excited to design and build an upgraded Large Hadron Collider to make proton-proton collisions at a much higher collision rate, to probe the fundamental structure of matter, measure the Higgs boson and other new particles to an unprecedented level of precision and search for undiscovered particles of nature”

Dr Bill Murray is a member of the Particle Physics Group at the UK’s Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) and said:

"The LHC found the Higgs boson, which we think means that apparently empty space is filled with an incredibly dense 'Higgs field'. This field is something new: not matter, not a force, but a different sort of constituent of nature. HL-LHC will look for a proof: pairs of Higgs bosons, because their interaction can confirm or disprove the existence of the field."

Dr Stephen Haywood, from the Particle Physics Group at the UK’s Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) said:

“The LHC has made a fantastic start to its physics programme with the discovery of the Higgs boson. But many mysteries remain and these can only be revealed by a substantial increase in the amount of data we collect – reducing uncertainties and extending our reach to greater energies. Only then might we begin to understand of what our Universe is made and why it exists at all.”

Professor Dave Charlton from the University of Birmingham and Spokesperson of the ATLAS Collaboration said:

“The High-Luminosity upgrade of the LHC and the large detectors, ATLAS and CMS, will extend the exciting physics programme of the LHC until the 2030's. The upgrades will enable physicists from the UK and around the world to study in much more depth the Higgs boson.

What's more, the tenfold increase in data will help us search beyond where we have explored before, perhaps giving us glimpses into dark matter or other new physics. This upgrade ensures that the LHC will be at the cutting edge for the next twenty years.”

Contact information

Jake Gilmore
Science and Technology Facilities Council
Tel: +44 7970 99 4586

Notes to Editors

STFC & CERN

The Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) co-ordinates and manages the UK’s involvement and subscription with CERN. The UK’s influence on both CERN Council and CERN Finance Committee is coordinated through the UK Committee on CERN (UKCC). UK membership of CERN gives our physicists and engineers access to the experiments and allows UK industry to bid for contracts, UK nationals to compete for jobs and research positions at CERN, and UK schools and teachers to visit. UK scientists hold many key roles at CERN. Firms in the UK win contracts for work at CERN worth millions of pounds each year. The impact of winning contracts is often even greater as it enables companies to win business elsewhere.