The Potential of the SPL at CERN

The Large Hadron Collider which is presently in construction at CERN is complementing a set of high performance proton accelerators that will supply him with the high brightness beam needed to reach the foreseen luminosity. Although this difficult project has top priority and uses most CERN resources, it is nevertheless time to plan for the future of the proton accelerator complex beyond the LHC start-up. The needs of multiple physics communities have to be taken into account, as well as the necessity to consolidate the installations and keep a high reliability. This paper summarizes the analysis and proposals made by the “High Intensity Proton” (HIP) working group [1, 2] for the short/medium term, describes the Superconducting Proton Linac (SPL) and highlights its potential.