Proposal of the Crystal Experiment

The CRYSTAL experiment intends to assess the possibility of using bent silicon crystals as primary collimators to direct the beam halo onto the secondary absorber thus reducing outscattering, beam losses in critical regions and radiation load. CRYSTAL has received full support from the LHC Technical Committee on the 30th of January. Four agencies have expressed their interest in the project: CERN, the Russian Institutions (PNPI, IHEP, JINR), INFN (Sections of Ferrara, Legnaro, Milano Bicocca, Roma1) and US LARP (BNL, FNAL, SLAC). The first version of the MoU is circulating among the collaboration and will be ready to be sent to the funding agencies before the end of April. This document briefly reviews the CRYSTAL experiment goals, its organization, the cost sharing among the agencies, the needed manpower and the time schedule. Appendix A describes what has already been done with crystals in collimation and why crystals could play a fundamental role while Appendix B analyzes in detail the items summarized in this Executive Summary.