Status and Challenges of the Future Circular Collider Study

Following the 2013 update of the European Strategy for Particle Physics, the international Future Circular Collider (FCC) study has been launched by CERN as host institute, to design an energy frontier hadron collider (FCC-hh) in a new 80-100 km tunnel with a centre-of-mass energy of about 100 TeV, an order of magnitude above the LHC's, as a long-term goal. The FCC study also includes the design of a 90-350 GeV high-luminosity lepton collider (FCC-ee) fitting the same tunnel, serving as Higgs, top and Z factory, as a potential intermediate step, as well as an electron-proton collider option (FCC-he). The physics cases for such machines will be assessed, concepts for experiments be worked out, and complete accelerator designs be developed in time for the next update of the European Strategy for Particle Physics by the end of 2018. Beside superconductor improvements and high-field magnet prototyping, the FCC R&D program includes the advancement of SRF cavities based on thin film coating, the development of highly efficient RF power sources, the beam dump technology required for disposing a beam with a stored energy of almost 10 GJ, radiation shielding concepts, performance models, a reliability analysis, and a global implementation strategy. As of January 2016, 70 institutes from around the world have joined the FCC collaboration. Part of the global study is co-funded by the European Commission under a HORIZON 2020 grant (“EuroCirCol”), which addresses the core aspects of the hadron collider design.