Dream Machines

Abstract

Dedicated to the memory of Burton Richter-master of the craft and exemplary citizen-scientist Particle accelerators and their detectors are the world's most powerful microscopes. They enable us to inspect the constituents of matter at attometer scales, study matter under unusual conditions, and concentrate extraordinary amounts of energy into tiny volumes to create new forms of matter and initiate new phenomena. The progress of particle physics and of accelerator science and technology go hand in hand. I look to the past, present, and future, raising questions that we would like to answer about nature along the way.

Modern and Future Colliders

“…Several hadron and lepton colliders have been proposed to extend the energy reach beyond the present LHC at CERN. The physics program that could be pursued by a next-energy frontier collider with sufficient luminosity would include: understanding the mechanism behind mass generation, the Higgs mechanism and the role of the Higgs boson in the electroweak symmetry breaking; answering the question of whether the Higgs boson is a fundamental or composite particle; searching for, and possibly discovering, supersymmetric or other exotic particles, which could be part of the Universe's dark matter; and hunting for signs of extra spacetime dimensions and quantum gravity [465,466]. As alluded to above, ambitious plans have been proposed to upgrade the FCC and CEPC to hadron colliders (FCC-hh and SppC, respectively) by means of next-or next-next generation SC magnets installed in the arc sections of the 100 km rings, so as to enable collision energy of the order 100 TeV or above [328,454].…”