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.