FCC

Expanding our understanding of the fundamental laws of nature requires the energy frontier to be pushed further. Reaching this goal within the 21st century in an efficient and reliable way calls for a larger circular collider.

The Future Circular Collider (FCC) aims at developing conceptual designs for a post-LHC particle accelerator research infrastructure in a global context, with an energy and luminosity significantly above that of previous circular colliders (SPS, Tevatron, LHC).

The study explores the potential of proton/proton (hadron) and electron/positron (lepton) circular colliders, performing an in-depth analysis of infrastructure and operation concepts and considering the technology research and development programmes, that are required to build and operate a future circular collider.

FCC with its high precision and high energy reach could extend the search of new particles and interactions well beyond the LHC, that may hold the key to understanding unexplained phenomena such as prevalence of matter over antimatter and provide evidence for dark matter.

RTU and FCC:

• In 2015 Riga Technical University signed the Memorandum of Understanding for the Future Circular Collider (FCC) Study hosted by CERN.
• It offers exciting possibilities to be involved in future engineering challenges of the FCC and collaborate with other participants to achieve common goals together.
• The Memorandum also includes hosting RTU researchers at CERN, granting access to CERN resources for the project time.
• Researchers from RTU are actively working to promote novel concepts of on-site repairs inside the FCC. Due to nature, size, scale and complexity of the circular collider it is evident that conventional repair methods and technologies will be insufficient, therefore novel solutions, like remote manipulations and laser-based additive manufacturing techniques, are developed.

RTU has had an active involvement in the project and has made important contributions to the overall study, namely, in the development of new concepts for the maintenance, repair and surveillance using robotic platforms with an integrated laser-cladding equipment. Furthermore, RTU has contributed to the final FCC conceptual design reports (Parts I, II, III and IV), which have been published in the European Physical Journal 28. The FCC project, with the involvement of Latvian experts, is providing valuable inputs to the upcoming European particle physics strategy update.

More information on the project

CERN project: LHC

Implementation stage: ongoing

Project partners: The FCC Study, hosted by CERN, is an international collaboration of more than 150 universities, research institutes and industrial partners from all over the world.

The project team of RTU: 
Prof. Toms Torims