Future colliders for particle physics—“Big and small”

• DOI: 10.1016/j.nima.2018.01.034
• Publication Date: 2018-01-31T15:27:50Z
• Authors: Frank Zimmermann
• Keywords: Muon collider

Discoveries at high-energy particle colliders have established the standard model of physics. Technological innovation has helped to increase collider energy a much faster pace than corresponding costs. New concepts will allow reaching ever higher luminosities and energies throughout coming century. Cost-effective strategies for implementation include staging. For example, future circular could first provide electron-positron collisions, then hadron collisions (proton-proton heavy-ion), finally collision muons. Cooling-free muon colliders, realizable in number ways, promise an attractive energy-efficient path towards lepton tens TeV. While plasma accelerators dielectric offer unprecedented gradients, construction based on these new technologies still calls significant improvements cost performance. Pushing accelerating gradients or bending fields further, breakdown QED vacuum may set ultimate limit electromagnetic acceleration. Finally, some ideas are sketched reaching, exceeding, Planck energy.