The world's largest particle collider
DATE:2024-07-05
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Next year, the CEPC proposal will be submitted to the Chinese government for possible inclusion in its next five-year plan. According to a comprehensive technical design report released on June 3, construction would begin in 2027 and take about 10 years if government support is secured. The report estimates that the supercollider will cost 36.4 billion yuan ($5.2 billion), which would make it significantly cheaper to build and operate than Europe's $17 billion Future Circular Collider (FCC). If approved by governments, construction of the European facility would begin in the 2030s.
Inside its huge underground tunnels, the CEPC will collide electrons and their antiparticle positrons at extremely high energies, producing millions of Higgs bosons. With such large numbers, researchers will be able to study the particle in more detail than ever before, says Andrew Cohen, a theoretical physicist at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. By measuring the Higgs boson more accurately, researchers will be able to probe questions that go beyond the Standard Model, the predominant but incomplete theory of the composition of the universe, such as the nature of dark matter and why there is more ordinary matter than antimatter in the universe.
The latest report includes a detailed blueprint of the gas pedal's layout design and component prototypes, said physicist Wang Yifang, director of the Institute of High Energy Physics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The report also assesses three potential sites: Qinhuangdao, Changsha and Huzhou.
"We are now confident that this is a real machine we can build," Wang said.
Many of the components of China's planned giant machine are already being tested at other facilities in China, said Frank Zimmermann, a physicist at CERN, Europe's particle-physics laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland. It includes the nearly completed High Energy Photon Source in Beijing. Zimmerman, who chaired the CEPC Technical Design Report Review Committee, was also involved with the FCC. Given that China already has a collider similar to the CEPC, the Beijing Positron-Positron Collider, the Institute of High Energy Physics may now specialize in this area more than CERN, he said. "They're making great progress," he said.
Help from abroad
Cohen, a member of CEPC's international advisory board, said the technical design report shows that China is capable of building CEPC's gas pedal with little help from international researchers. "If they want to build the gas pedal and move forward, they can," he said. But he added that China may need to draw on outside expertise to develop the collider's detectors, which was not the focus of the report.
Tianyu Cao, a historian and philosopher of particle physics and quantum field theory at Boston University in Massachusetts, said another obstacle the CEPC could face is attracting funding from other countries amid ongoing geopolitical tensions. I think the West will be more reluctant to help China," Cao Tianyu said.
But the challenge of securing international funding is not unique to China. In May, the German government said it would not pay its share of the FCC's $17 billion bid, a major setback for the program.
However, Prof. Wang believes that the CEPC will be an international collaboration. He points out that international researchers already make up 30-50% of the teams at some of China's major physics facilities, including the Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory in Kaiping, which will begin operation this year. "We believe [CEPC] will be similar," he says.
In the meantime, Wang and his team are working on an engineering design report that will outline the construction of the CEPC in more detail. "We're trying to make sure we're fully prepared for such a project," Wang said.
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Inside its huge underground tunnels, the CEPC will collide electrons and their antiparticle positrons at extremely high energies, producing millions of Higgs bosons. With such large numbers, researchers will be able to study the particle in more detail than ever before, says Andrew Cohen, a theoretical physicist at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. By measuring the Higgs boson more accurately, researchers will be able to probe questions that go beyond the Standard Model, the predominant but incomplete theory of the composition of the universe, such as the nature of dark matter and why there is more ordinary matter than antimatter in the universe.
The latest report includes a detailed blueprint of the gas pedal's layout design and component prototypes, said physicist Wang Yifang, director of the Institute of High Energy Physics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The report also assesses three potential sites: Qinhuangdao, Changsha and Huzhou.
"We are now confident that this is a real machine we can build," Wang said.
Many of the components of China's planned giant machine are already being tested at other facilities in China, said Frank Zimmermann, a physicist at CERN, Europe's particle-physics laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland. It includes the nearly completed High Energy Photon Source in Beijing. Zimmerman, who chaired the CEPC Technical Design Report Review Committee, was also involved with the FCC. Given that China already has a collider similar to the CEPC, the Beijing Positron-Positron Collider, the Institute of High Energy Physics may now specialize in this area more than CERN, he said. "They're making great progress," he said.
Help from abroad
Cohen, a member of CEPC's international advisory board, said the technical design report shows that China is capable of building CEPC's gas pedal with little help from international researchers. "If they want to build the gas pedal and move forward, they can," he said. But he added that China may need to draw on outside expertise to develop the collider's detectors, which was not the focus of the report.
Tianyu Cao, a historian and philosopher of particle physics and quantum field theory at Boston University in Massachusetts, said another obstacle the CEPC could face is attracting funding from other countries amid ongoing geopolitical tensions. I think the West will be more reluctant to help China," Cao Tianyu said.
But the challenge of securing international funding is not unique to China. In May, the German government said it would not pay its share of the FCC's $17 billion bid, a major setback for the program.
However, Prof. Wang believes that the CEPC will be an international collaboration. He points out that international researchers already make up 30-50% of the teams at some of China's major physics facilities, including the Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory in Kaiping, which will begin operation this year. "We believe [CEPC] will be similar," he says.
In the meantime, Wang and his team are working on an engineering design report that will outline the construction of the CEPC in more detail. "We're trying to make sure we're fully prepared for such a project," Wang said.