Prof. Ashutosh Kotwal has been appointed the US Coordinator for a global effort to motivate and design a new proton-proton collider of much higher energy than the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) currently operating at CERN.
Prof. Kotwal has recently concluded studies that motivate a major upgrade of the LHC. This upgrade project has been ranked as the highest priority in the medium term by the US and Europe. As a result, the LHC will continue to operate for another 15-20 years and we are optimistic that it will shed light on the mystery of dark matter and the origin of the Higgs field. If these big questions are answered by Supersymmetry or new forces with particle masses of 1-2 trillion electron-Volts (TeV), the LHC will reveal these new frontiers of fundamental science.
It is expected that detailed exploration of these frontiers will require collider energies in the 100-200 TeV range, about 10 times higher than the LHC. This new collider can also guarantee the production of Dark Matter particles. It is time to start planning for new technologies that can be used 25-30 years from now to build this Very Large Hadron Collider (VLHC) of about 100 km in circumference. Expressions of interest have been presented by Europe and China, and Prof. Kotwal is leading the US participation in this global planning.
Department of Physics
