Planning the upgrade

The main aim of Preparatory Phase project of the Large Hadron Collider upgrade (SLHC-PP), co-funded by the European commission, is to prepare the SLHC project for a decision on the approval of its implementation by 2011.

Beside the justification of SLHC by the physics results and operational experience from the first years of LHC running, the necessary ingredients for the approval will include: the maturity of new technologies required for SLHC, solutions for critical safety issues, and the formation of collaborations for the implementation, including the definition of work sharing and financial commitments.

The SLHC-PP project is fully set up to address these issues and to prepare for the approval by the CERN council and by all other funding agencies involved.

Setting up a detailed work plan and cost estimate is part of the SLHC preparatory phase project.

Initial estimates suggest new investments in the region of the level of €1 billion ($1.27 billion) are needed to upgrade both the accelerators and the detectors. Installation of the stage-I elements, including LINAC 4 and the new Nb-Ti focusing triplets, is foreseen for 2012-2013, while the additional upgrades of the injector complex (LPSPL, PS2) will be completed by 2016-2017.

The ground-breaking ceremony in October 2008 that marked the beginning of work on LINAC4 (original image here).