The LHeC project

by nestor Armesto (Universidade de Santiago de Compostela)

Thursday 9 Apr 2026, 14:00 → 15:30 Europe/Lisbon

LIP-Lisboa/3-311 - Sala de Seminários (LIP Lisboa)

The Large Hadron electron Collider (LHeC) is the proposal to deliver electron-proton/nucleus collisions at CERN using the LHC beams and a 50 GeV electron beam from an Energy Recovery Linac. While initially foreseen [1] for concurrent electron-hadron and hadron-hadron operation, a standalone electron-hadron operation phase has been proposed [2] in view of the current LHC schedule. Thus, the LHeC becomes a bridge from the HL-LHC to the next flagship at CERN, and one of the possible projects in the 2026 Update of the European Strategy for Particle Physics [3], were the FCC-ee as plan A not feasible.

In this talk we describe the accelerator and detector aspects of the proposal, and its physics program both by itself and as complementary or synergetic with those from other accelerators. Finally, I will discuss the status of the project in view of the 2026 Update of the European Strategy for Particle Physics, and the future steps.

 

[1] P. Agostini et al. (LHeC/FCC-he Study Group), J. Phys. G 48, 110501 (2021), arXiv:2007.14491 [hep-ex].

[2] F. Ahmadova et al., e-Print: 2503.17727 [hep-ex].

[3] The European Strategy for Particle Physics: 2026 Update - Recommendations by the European Strategy Group, https://cds.cern.ch/record/2950671/files/CERN-ESU-2025-002.pdf?version=1.