FUTURE COLLIDERS
Physics Potential and Detector Optimization at Future Lepton Colliders
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a 27-kilometre circular accelerator, is the world’s largest particle accelerator and is part of the CERN research centre near Geneva, Switzerland. In July 2012, the LHC experiments announced the discovery of the Higgs boson, opening a new era for particle physics.
There is broad consensus in the high-energy physics community that the next major collider should include an electron-positron collider capable of performing precision measurements of the Higgs boson and other Standard Model particles: the so-called Higgs/EW/Top quark factories.
The leading proposal in Europe is the Future Circular Collider (FCC) at CERN. Its first stage, FCC-ee, would be an electron-positron collider operating at several centre-of-mass energies and providing extremely large and clean samples of Z bosons, W bosons, Higgs bosons and top quarks. FCC-ee would enable unprecedented precision tests of the Standard Model and provide powerful indirect sensitivity to new physics. A later stage, FCC-hh, could extend the programme to proton-proton collisions at much higher energies.
Complementary studies are also being pursued for a possible Linear Collider Facility (LCF) at CERN, based on linear electron-positron collider technologies. A linear collider would provide complementary capabilities, including tuneable collision energies and longitudinally polarised beams, allowing detailed studies of the Higgs sector, electroweak interactions and the chiral structure of fundamental interactions.
Both circular and linear electron-positron colliders offer exceptionally clean experimental environments compared with hadron colliders, making them powerful tools for precision measurements and searches for physics beyond the Standard Model.
TOP-QUARK & HEAVY FLAVOUR
HIGGS AND BSM
PERFORMANCE STUDIES AND DETECTOR OPTIMIZATION
Following the 2026 Update of the European Strategy for Particle Physics, FCC-ee has been recommended as the preferred option for the next flagship collider at CERN. This recommendation builds on the extensive physics, detector and accelerator studies carried out over the last years, including the FCC Feasibility Study, completed in 2025.
The focus of the community is therefore progressively moving from feasibility and comparative studies towards the implementation and preparation of the FCC-ee experimental programme. In particular, the current FCC Physics, Experiments and Detectors (PED) activities aim at converging on detector concepts, key technologies and the organisation of the future experiments. At the same time, the CERN-wide Detector R&D (DRD) programme provides the technological framework required to bring many of these detector technologies to the level needed for future collider experiments.
The AITANA group is strongly involved in this new phase, with activities spanning detector R&D, detector concepts and physics studies. The group participates actively in several CERN DRD collaborations, with a particularly strong involvement in DRD Calo, as well as in the FCAL Collaboration, contributing to the development of highly granular and compact silicon calorimetry, forward detector systems and precision luminometry for future colliders.
AITANA is also strongly involved in the ILD detector concept, which provides an advanced and mature framework for the development and optimisation of Particle Flow detector technologies relevant for future electron-positron colliders, including FCC-ee and the Linear Collider Facility (LCF). A. Irles serves as Chair of the ILD Collaboration Board and member of the ILD Executive Team, following previous responsibilities within the physics and software coordination team.
These complementary activities allow the AITANA group to contribute directly to the transition from detector R&D and physics-performance studies towards the design and implementation of the next generation of experiments at CERN.
Este sitio web está patrocinado por la Conselleria de Innovación, Universidades, Ciencia y Sociedad Digital de la Generalitat Valenciana
