5/18/01
peggs@bnl.gov
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Welcome to M4 - the Working Group on Hadron Colliders
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Welcome to http://vlhc.org -- the M4 home page!
** FIRST ORGANIZATIONAL MEETING **
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Our first organizational meeting will occur on Monday afternoon, July 2, (meeting time and
place to be announced).
Philosophy
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The working group does *NOT* intend to merely to follow through with the VLHC Design Study
parameters (with fixed circumference, magnetic field, configuration, et cetera). Snowmass
is a time to think "outside the box". Nonetheless, the Design Study provides a
convenient baseline against which to measure alternative (perhaps radically alternative)
designs.
M4 membership is not (necessarily) a commitment to be exclusively or even primarily
involved in M4 activities. Rather it signifies an intellectual contribution to M4 work in
some way, enough to become a co-author of the M4 summary report at the end of Snowmass.
Charge summary:
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1) Develop a vision and a long-term plan for the US hadron collider program.
2) Examine the central physics and technology issues, and specify the most critical ones.
3) Identify the technology developments and accelerator physics experiments needed to
prove a future machine feasible.
4) Evaluate and estimate the technological and physics limitations on ultimate energy and
luminosity.
5) Evaluate the recently completed VLHC Design Study, and compare with other potential
approaches.
6) Develop a prioritized R&D plan to establish the above goals, including a cost and
schedule estimate.
Topics
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Among the working topics that it seems natural to address in the M4 working group are the
following:
*) Interaction region optics
*) Critical evaluation of the VLHC Design Study.
*) Alternative approaches to high energy, high luminosity
*) Feedback -- beam instabilities, operational parameters
*) Instabilities, especially in the low field ring
*) Potential experiments with beam at existing hadron colliders
*) R&D plan R&D
*) Simulation campaigns
Schedule
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Joint discussion sessions with other working groups -- mainly the T groups -- are being
organized. They will stimulate further discussion and work. An evolving schedule can be
found on the M4 Home Page http://vlhc.org.