Towards brighter and more intense hadron beams, understanding challenges and limitations

From increasing luminosity in colliders to building more powerful spallation sources, collective effects in hadron beams are a major challenge for present accelerator-based projects.

By Alexandre Lasheen (CERN) & Yannis Papaphilippou (CERN)

Increasing the intensity and brightness of hadron accelerators is an increasing need to meet the demands accelerator-based nuclear and particle research, as well as applications in the fields of, for example, medical and material sciences.  

At CERN, the most notable project requiring an increase of beam brightness (i.e., the ratio of the beam intensity to the beam size) is the High Luminosity Large Hadron Collider (HL-LHC) project. For this, the established target is to double the beam intensity while reducing the beam size at the collision point, yielding significant challenges. To provide this increased beam intensity, the whole LHC injector complex underwent a complete upgrade to address limitations due to the increased beam intensity.