SLHC: The LHC luminosity upgrade

Alessia Tricomi
University of Catania and INFN Catania, Italy
a r t i c l e i n f o
Available online 25 July 2008
Keywords:
LHC
Upgrade
Higgs
SUSY
a b s t r a c t
The LHC will provide unprecedented sensitivity to Standard Model and beyond the Standard Model
Physics. However, some important Standard Model measurements as well as a wide part of the
spectrum of particles predicted by many promising theoretical models of New Physics are likely beyond
the LHC reach. For such observations, a factor-of-ten increase in LHC statistics will have a major impact.
A luminosity upgrade is therefore planned for the LHC. The SLHC as well as offering the possibility to
increase the Physics potential will create an extreme operating environment for the detectors,
particularly the tracking devices. An increase in the number of minimum bias events per beam crossing
by at least an order of magnitude beyond the levels envisioned for LHC design luminosity creates the
need to handle much higher occupancies and for the innermost layers unprecedented levels of
radiation. This will require a fully upgraded tracking system giving a higher granularity, while trying not
to exceed the material budget and power levels of the current trackers. The much higher rate of
interactions may also push the limits of the Level-1 trigger system. Efforts have already begun to
address these issues. This paper presents the possible Physics reaches at SLHC and the current
understanding of what systems will need to be upgraded.
& 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
At the time of writing, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN
plans to start the data taking period in summer 2008. All the
magnets have been already installed and the cooling sector tests
are going on. A rst phase of machine commissioning run with 43
colliding counter-rotating pairs of 7TeV proton bunches increas-
ing to 156, with a luminosity ranging from 3 10
28
cm
2
s
1
up to
2 10
31
cm
2
s
1
, is foreseen for the rst months of 2008. A
second phase with 25ns bunch crossing time and a luminosity of
10
32
cm
2
s
1
will follow and then a slowly rump up should bring
the machine up to the design luminosity of 10
34
cm
2
s
1
. A total
integrated luminosity of 300fb
1
should be collected in this long
running phase. However, assuming the nominal LHC luminosity
prole, the LHC Interaction Region (IR) quadrupole lifetime is
expected to be less than about 8 years and, on the other hand, the
statistical error halving time will exceed 5 years by the time those
components would need to be replaced. An even more demanding
scenario, with a luminosity ramping up from 10
34
up to 2
10
34
cm
2
s
1
is under discussion. Under this scenario, the LHC IR
quadrupole magnets would reach their radiation hardness limit
much earlier and will require replacement. The question arises
whether it is reasonable to plan a machine luminosity upgrade
based on new low-b IR magnets that would increase the
luminosity by up to an order of magnitude. Over the last years
an upgrade of the LHC, the Super-LHC (SLHC), towards a factor 10
higher luminosity (10
35
cm
2
s
1
) has been discussed as an
extension of the LHC Physics program. Such an upgrade will
extend the LHC mass reach, however, it will require challenging
improvements in both the ATLAS [1] and the CMS [2] detectors.
The proposed luminosity upgrade to the LHC imposes signicant
challenges on the LHC detectors: their design must function
within a much harder radiation environment and yet preserve, if
not improve, their ability to maximize the upgrades Physics
opportunities. In addition, they must be designed, constructed,
and installed on a tight timescale in order to be ready for
operation in 2016. In preparation for this, several R&D programs
have already been started both to provide guidelines for new
detector technologies, which may be employed at the anticipated
high radiation levels, as well as to study and design the new
possible detector layouts, in order to be able to cope with the
improved Physics program.
This paper summarizes the main possible scenarios for the
machine upgrade and its main Physics potential. Issues and
studies underway to address the challenges of pursuing Physics at
the SLHC with the ATLAS and CMS detectors are also discussed.
2. LHC machine upgrade scenarios
The LHC is a 14TeV protonproton collider designed to reach
a luminosity of 10
34
cm
2
s
1
with a lifetime of the order of
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journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/nima
Nuclear Instruments and Methods in
Physics Research A
0168-9002/$ - see front matter & 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.nima.2008.07.118
E-mail address: Tricomi@ct.infn.it
Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research A 596 (2008) 4347
810 years. The LHC luminosity prole and the achievable Physics
reaches are shown in Fig. 1.
In its present design, the LHC luminosity is limited by the beam
dumping system, the machine collimation and protection sys-
tems, and the electron cloud effects, which may constrain the
minimum bunch spacing. As already explained in Section 1, even
assuming the nominal LHC luminosity prole, with no further
increase above 10
34
cm
2
s
1
, the LHC IR quadrupole life expec-
tancy is less than 10 years and the statistical error halving time
will exceed 5 years by 2013. Even if this prole is delayed by a
couple of years, this does not affect consideration of an LHC
luminosity upgrade based on new low-b IR magnets for the
middle of the next decade.
Three different upgrade phases are foreseen:
Phase 1: It is foreseen to push the LHC machine to its
maximum performance without any change in the hardware.
A luminosity of 2:3 10
34
cm
2
s
1
should be reached. Even-
tually, the LHC dipole eld could also be increased to its
ultimate value of 9T, raising the energy from 7 to 7.54TeV.
Phase 2: It is the so-called SLHC phase, which is the main focus
of this paper. A factor 10 increase in luminosity should be
reached with modication to the insertion quadrupoles and
changes in the main machine parameters (crossing angle,
number of protons per bunch, longitudinal bunch width,
number of bunches). No energy increase is foreseen in the
SLHC upgrade.
Phase 3: Both energy and luminosity upgrades are foreseen.
This involves injection system modications, rebuilding the
SPS with superconducting magnets and upgrading the transfer
lines to inject into the LHC at 1TeV and installing new 15T
dipoles, producing a beam energy of 12.5TeV. This phase is
called VLHC. Since the timescale for Phase 3 is the end of the
next decade, this paper restricts the upgrade discussion to
Phase 2, called the SLHC.
In the past years, several different scenarios for the machine
upgrade parameters have been considered. Recently, the Physics
opportunities and future proton accelerators (POFPA) Committee
recommended a 50 ns bunch spacing conguration as the SLHC
baseline [3]. The actual baseline foreseen, indeed, a 50 ns bunch
spacing in interaction point (IP) 1 (ATLAS) and 5 (CMS) and 25ns
bunch spacing in IP 8 (LHCb), with about 4:9 10
11
protons per
bunch, which are very challenging for the injector system, and
large Piwinski angle [4]. If this conguration can be implemented,
it would result in a peak instantaneous luminosity of
10
35
cm
2
s
1
, roughly 10 times the design luminosity of the
LHC and 400 pp interactions (pile-up) per beam crossing. SLHC
should be able to deliver approximately 3000fb
1
of integrated
luminosity per experiment. The baseline scenario also possibly
requires the installation of new 8m long slim quadrupole magnets
near the IR, probably between the forward muon wheels. A second
scenario, taken into account as a backup solution, foreseen 25ns
bunch spacing (the same as the actual LHC conguration), 1:7
10
11
protons per bunch and smaller Piwinski angle. While this
parameter conguration is less demanding for the injector system
modication and it entails fewer pile-up events (average 300), it
also requires the placement of dipole magnets adjacent to the
inner detectors, which impose severe constraints in the re-design
of the tracking systems.
The large pile-up and integrated exposure are, of course, major
experimental challenges, both from the perspective of detector
performances as well as radiation tolerance. As may be expected,
the detectors at low radii r and large pseudorapidity Z are most
affected, including the inner detectors, forward calorimeters, and
forward muon wheels. The barrel calorimeters and muon
chambers, on the other hand, are left largely untouched. In
addition, new detector electronics may be required for increased
radiation hardness, and readout systems are being evaluated to
cope with the bandwidth requirements expected by the higher
detector granularities and occupancies being discussed. Also the
Trigger system is largely affected and a new design is needed.
3. Physics motivations
The LHC will be the rst accelerator to operate well above the
energy regime of the electroweak symmetry breaking. Therefore,
data from the LHC detectors will probably revolutionize our
understanding of high energy Physics. Indeed, LHC should be able
to cover most of the Standard Model (SM) Physics programme, in
particular the Higgs discovery programme. In addition, LHC
should be able to probe the existence of Physics beyond the
Standard Model (BSM), like SUSY, extradimensions or other
exotics, especially in the low energy domain. The exact Physics
case for SLHC is hence difcult to predict today, since it depends
very much on what the LHC will nd or not nd. In general,
the SLHC can extend the LHC mass reach by 2030%, thereby
enhancing and consolidating the discovery potential at the
compelling TeV scale. The main goal of SLHC, as it appears now,
is to extend the discovery reach for Physics beyond the SM and to
improve the sensitivity for measurements which are rate-limited
at the LHC. A few examples of Physics case in which SLHC can
improve with respect to LHC are discussed below. It is assumed
that integrated luminosities of 1002300fb
1
100023000fb
1

per experiment will be collected at the LHC (SLHC). More

examples and comparisons of the LHC and SLHC Physics potentials
(for new gauge bosons Z
0
, theories with Extra-dimensions, etc.)
can be found in Ref. [5].
When the LHC is running at design luminosity, if the Higgs
exits, it should not escape from discovery in almost the whole
mass range. Once it has been observed, however, parameters such
as the mass and couplings will need to be measured. This may
require up to 300fb
1
or more. Due to the small branching ratios
for clean nal states, there are insufcient statistics to measure
the Higgs self-coupling at the LHC. As for the Higgs, if SUSY is
observed at the LHC then the masses and model parameters will
need to be determined, along with the connection to cosmology
(e.g. dark matter), the impact on Higgs phenomenology and the
SUSY breaking mechanism. Depending on the scenario in which
SUSY will reveal itself, the measurements of masses and the
disentangling of different models could be difcult with the LHC.
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Fig. 1. Expected LHC and SLHC luminosity prole. The attainable mass reach in
each period is also shown.
A. Tricomi / Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research A 596 (2008) 4347 44
If neither the Higgs nor SUSY is found, then other possibilities
need investigation, such as strong W
L
W
L
scattering, other EWSB
mechanisms, extra dimensions, little Higgs models and Technico-
lor. Detecting and untangling such new Physics may also be
beyond the capabilities of the LHC.
3.1. Higgs sector
The Higgs couplings to fermions and bosons can be accessed
through the measurement of the Higgs production rate in a given
channel (g
2
f
/ G
f
, where G
f
is the partial width for that channel)
provided that the Higgs production cross-section and total width
are known from theory. Ratios of couplings, which are experi-
mentally accessible through the measurements of ratios of rates
for two different nal states, provide the only possible theory
independent measurements, because in the ratios the total Higgs
cross-section and width cancel. In Fig. 2 the ratios between the
H !ZZ !4m rate and the H !WW!mnmn rate, which pro-
vides a direct measurement of the ratio G
Z
=G
W
, are shown for
Higgs masses larger than 150GeV. At the SLHC ratios of Higgs
couplings to fermions and bosons should be measured with
ultimate precisions of 1020%, which represents an improvement
by up to a factor of two on the accuracy expected at the LHC.
Although this performance is not competitive with the 1%
sensitivity of a Linear Collider, it will nevertheless provide very
useful constraints of the underlying theory.
Several rare decay modes, which have a branching ratio too
low to be observed at LHC, could be observed for the rst time at
SLHC. For instance, through the observation of the H !mm decay
mode, the measurement of the Hmm coupling should be possible
with a precision of the order of 20%.
Due to lack of statistics, the measurement of the Higgs self-
coupling, which is an important parameter to probe the non-
Abelian nature of the Higgs sector, cannot be achieved at LHC. This
measurement can be done at SLHC by looking for the production
of a pair of Higgs bosons, to which the H !HH vertex contributes,
reaching a sensitivity again of the order of 2030%. A promising
channel is, for instance, the H !HH !WWWW!l

nl

njjjj
decay, with a nal states characterized by jets and same-sign
leptons.
3.2. SUSY
As was demonstrated by both ATLAS and CMS simulation
studies [6,7], if SUSYexists at the TeV scale, it should not escape at
LHC. The reach for squarks and gluinos is, in fact, up
to 2:5TeV=c
2
masses, with the ultimate LHC luminosity of
300fb
1
for each experiment. Most of the parameter space should
be covered already in the rst years of data taking. Discovery of
SUSY will likely proceed through searches of excess of events over
the SM background in the inclusive multi-jet plus missing
transverse energy channel or multi-jet plus missing transverse
energy plus leptons channel. It may happen, however, that SUSY
particles are just at the corner of LHC reach and SLHC can enhance
the discovery reach of about 0:5 up to 3TeV=c
2
, as can be seen
from Fig. 3.
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0
0.1
0.2
0.3
120

W
/
Z
(indirect)

W
/
Z
(direct)
ATLAS + CMS
L dt = 300 fb
-1
and L dt = 3000 fb
-1

m
H
(GeV) m
H
(GeV)

W
/

Z
)
/
(

W
/

Z
)
0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
100

W
/
t
(indirect)

W
/
t
(indirect)

W
/
b
(indirect)

W
/

(direct)
ATLAS + CMS
L dt = 300 fb
-1
and L dt = 3000 fb
-1

V
/

f
)
/
(

V
/

f
)
150 200 140 160 180
Fig. 2. Expected sensitivity on the ratios of several Higgs partial widths for nal states involving only bosons (left) and bosons and fermions (right), as a function of the
Higgs mass. The closed symbols correspond to an integrated luminosity of 600fb
1
(LHC : ATLAS CMS), the open symbols to an integrated luminosity of 6000fb
1
(SLHC : ATLAS CMS).
500
1000
1500
2000
2500
3000
0
m
0
(GeV)
m
1
/
2


(
G
e
V
)
E
T
miss

+ jets
s = 28 TeV : 100 fb
-1
s = 14 TeV : 1000 fb
-1
, 2000 fb
-1
s = 14 TeV : 100 fb
-1
, 200 fb
-1
g(2500)
~
g(3000)
~
g(4000)
~
q
(4
0
0
0
)
~
q
(3
0
0
0
)
~
q
(
2
5
0
0
)
~
T
h
e
o
r
e
t
i
c
a
l
l
y

e
x
c
l
u
d
e
d

:

m
(

1

)

<


m
(

1 0
)

500 1000 1500 2000
~
~
Fig. 3. CMS 5s discovery reach in the mSUGRA (m
0
; m
1=2
) plane for the inclusive
multi-jet plus transverse missing energy nal states. The various curves show the
discovery reach for integrated luminosities of 100 and 200fb
1
(LHC), for 1000 and
2000fb
1
(SLHC), and for 100fb
1
and 28TeV center-of-mass energy (VLHC).
Isomass contours for squarks and gluinos are also shown by the dash-dotted
curves.
A. Tricomi / Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research A 596 (2008) 4347 45
Even if SUSY will be discovered at LHC, the reconstruction of SUSY
particles as well as the measurement of model parameters may be
quite difcult at LHC, depending on the scenario in which SUSY will
reveal itself. The precise measurement of SUSY particles requires in
most cases the selection of exclusive decay modes, containing e.g.
leptons or b-jets, and therefore the full power of the detectors,
including well-performing trackers. Some of these exclusive channels
are expected to be rate-limited at the LHC and would therefore
benet from a luminosity upgrade. As was pointed out in Ref. [8], for
instance, squark and gluino reconstruction, becomes very difcult for
large tanb values, where tanb is the ratio of the vacuum expectation
value of the Higgs doublets, and the whole LHC statistics is not
enough to access large region of the parameter space.
SLHC can contribute also in the discovery of the SUSY Higgs
sector. Indeed, it can be seen [6,7] that over part of the parameter
space the LHC should be able to discover two or more of the ve
SUSY Higgs bosons. However, this can happen only in certain region
of the parameter space, while this is not the case in the region at
large m
A
(the so-called decoupling limit), where only the lightest
state h (which has very similar features to the SM Higgs boson) can
be observed, unless the heavier Higgs bosons have detectable decay
modes into SUSY particles. This means that neither LHC nor a future
sub-TeV linear collider, could probe the discovery of the Higgs heavy
states. SLHC, on the contrary, should extend signicantly the region
over which at least one heavy Higgs boson can be discovered and
should cover the full region m
A
o500GeV=c
2
.
3.3. Precision measurement of the SM parameters
Precision measurement of the SM parameters will be limited
by systematic uncertainties already after the rst years of data
taking at LHC. However, some precision measurements require
high statistics data sample and hence could benet from a 10-fold
increase in luminosity. An example of a precision measurement in
which SLHC can signicantly contribute is represented by the
measurement of triple gauge couplings (TGC). The TGC, i.e. the
couplings of the type WWg and WWZ, represent a very important
test of the SM, since they probe the non-Abelian structure of the
SM gauge group. TGC are described in terms of ve parameters,
l
g
; Dk
g
; l
Z
; Dg
Z
and Dk
Z
, which in the SM are all zero. They are
hence sensitive to new Physics, since several scenarios beyond the
SM predict anomalous contributions to the above vertices.
It should be noted that, although most of the SM has been tested
to the permil level or better, the TGC have only been constrained
to the percent level by LEP and Tevatron. Hence, improved
measurements in this sector are desirable. Furthermore, since
the anomalous contributions depend on the scale of new Physics
L, and this scale can be very high, there is no limit to the wished
precision. Fig. 4 shows the sensitivity to TGC for several different
conguration of energies and luminosities. As can be seen from
these plots, these measurements are more sensitive to a 10-fold
increase in luminosity than to an energy increase.
4. Detector upgrades and expected performances
As already pointed out, the expected high radiation levels as
well as the large increase in the occupancy impose stringent
requirements to the ATLAS and CMS detectors, especially for the
inner tracking system and the forward calorimeters.
A replacement of the Tracker is foreseen by both the
experiments. In order to cope with the increased occupancy,
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-0.003
-0.002
-0.001
0
0.001
0.002
0.003
-0.05
-0.06
-0.04
-0.02
0
0.02
0.04
0.06
-0.005
-0.006
-0.004
-0.002
0
0.002
0.004
0.006
-0.0025

g
z

z
g
z

z

z
z
-0.006
-0.004
-0.002
0
0.002
0.004
0.006
0
0 -0.025 0.025 0.05 0 0.005
0 0.0025 0.005 -0.025 -0.05 0.05 0.025
Fig. 4. ATLAS expected 95% CL constraints on pairs of TGC. The various contours correspond to a center-of-mass energy of 14TeV and an integrated luminosity of 100fb
1
(solid), 28TeV and 100fb
1
(dot-dash), 14TeV and 1000fb
1
(dash), and 28TeV and 1000fb
1
(dotted).
A. Tricomi / Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research A 596 (2008) 4347 46
the LHC trackers will have to be replaced with higher granularity
(about a factor of ve more channels) devices. The increased
channel number imposes stringent constraints also for the power
consumptions as well for the material budget. In addition, very
radiation-hard techniques will be needed in the hottest region
within 20cm from the beam pipe, which necessitates funda-
mental R&D for new materials and concepts. At larger radii,
evolutions of the present pixel and strip technologies should be
adequate. The Tracker information should also be used for
Trigger purposes and a special layout is needed to cope with this
new issue.
As far as concerns the Calorimeters, the increase in pile-up
events and the harsher environment in the forward region
requires a carefully study of the radiation resistance of the CMS
endcap crystals and of the space-charge effects in the ATLAS LAr
forward calorimeters. The scintillator of the CMS hadronic endcap
calorimeter will likely be replaced.
The Muon systems should not be largely affected by the
luminosity increase. However, due to the modication to the LHC
beam line, the forward shielding will probably need to be
increased, thereby reducing the spectrometer acceptance from
about jZjo2:5 to about jZjo2:0.
Due to the increased occupancy at SLHC, the ATLAS and CMS
trigger and DAQ systems would need signicant modications.
Indeed, the increased occupancy will degrade the performance of
the algorithms, as well as increasing the event size to be read out.
The Level-1 Trigger output should not exceed the 100KHz limit in
order to avoid rebuilding the front end electronics where possible.
In order to match the above-mentioned requirements the use
of additional trigger information from the rebuilt tracking systems
is mandatory. A new DAQ architecture exploiting new develop-
ments in commodity networking would help to address the SLHC
challenge.
As discussed in Section 3, in order to fully exploit the 10-fold
increase in luminosity and to full the Physics cases discussed
above, the experiments must be able to reconstruct and identify
electrons, taus, b-jets, with at least the same precision as the
actual detectors allow. ATLAS has performed a set of simulation to
understand the weakness of the actual design. For a xed electron
efciency of about 80%, the rejection against jets faking electrons
is reduced by about 30% at L 10
35
cm
2
s
1
compared to L
10
34
cm
2
s
1
for p
T
40GeV=c, and by smaller factors at higher
transverse momenta. This deterioration is due to the increased
pile-up in the calorimeters and to the larger occupancy in the
tracking system.
As another example, the jet energy resolution is degraded from
15% (LHC) to 40% (SLHC) for central jets with E
T
50GeV, while it
is essentially unaffected for E
T
X1TeV. This is due to the fact that
the contribution of the pile-up noise to the energy resolution
decreases with the shower energy as 1=E. Finally, a preliminary
study of the b-tagging performance at the SLHC has been made,
assuming trackers providing the same two-track separation
capabilities at SLHC. For a b-tagging efciency of 50%, the
rejection against light quark jets decreases by a factor of about
six (two) for jets with p
T
80GeV=c p
T
300GeV=c. All the
results discussed in this section have been obtained using the
same reconstruction algorithms developed for the LHC Physics
case without any specic optimization for the higher pile-up
environment, which indeed pose severe constraints in the
reconstruction procedures. Work is ongoing both in ATLAS and
CMS to study the detector performances in the high pile-up
environment and to understand how to optimize the design of the
new detectors needed.
5. Conclusions
LHC will certainly provide a deep view of the Physics at TeV
scale, however, depending from the scenario we will nd, it is not
guaranteed that a whole understanding of all the fundamental
questions in particle Physics will be available. At the same time,
predicting today which could be the best next machine after LHC
it is quite hard and it will become clear only after the coming of
LHC results. A good compromise between Physics achievements
and costs comes from a luminosity upgrade of LHC up to
10
35
cm
2
s
1
. SLHC represents indeed a consolidation and
extension of the LHC programme. It could provide good Physics
return, e.g. extend the discovery mass reach by 2030% and
improve the sensitivity for precision measurements, for a modest
capital investment compared to the LHC cost. It maximally
exploits the existing tunnel, the machine and also the experi-
ments, without the need of a completely newaccelerator. It is also
evident that the SLHC will pose a signicant challenge to the
ATLAS and CMS experiments, with its aggressive timescale
and harsh environment. The entire Tracking systems should be
replaced, and major upgrades are also being considered for the
forward calorimeters, trigger system and beampipe. The immi-
nent arrival of LHC data in the current detector will help to focus
the work in the right direction. In light of these challenges and
considerable Physics opportunities a number of R&D efforts have
already started in order to be ready to take SLHC data in the mid of
next decade.
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