LEP 2000 Status Report

The scope of the LEP programme has progressively widened leading to an increase in the operating energy from 87 GeV in 1996 to 96 GeV in 1998, with a peak luminosity of about 8 ·1031 cm-2s-1. With LEP operation ending in the year 2000, the question came up of whether higher energies, approaching 100 GeV per beam, could be attained. This report gives details of recent work aimed at defining the ultimate energy reach of LEP with, as far as possible, the use of existing equipment. The initial aim was to investigate the possibility of operating the superconducting cavities at higher gradients (around 7 MV/m) to allow a beam energy of ~100 GeV/beam. The performance at these energies as well as the technical implications for the LEP equipment are reported here. In summary, we have not yet found any insurmountable fundamental effect which would exclude operation at energies around 100 GeV. Nevertheless, many significant improvements need to be made to many systems in order to achieve such high energies. Although a lot of effort is being directed at this work, the success of the project cannot be guaranteed within the planned time-scale.