Peter Higgs has passed away at the age of 94. An iconic figure in modern science, Higgs in 1964 postulated the existence of the eponymous Higgs boson. Its discovery at CERN in 2012 was the crowning achievement of the Standard Model (SM) of particle physics – a remarkable theory that explains the visible universe at the most fundamental level.
Alongside Robert Brout and François Englert, and building on the work of a generation of physicists, Higgs postulated the existence of the Brout–Englert–Higgs (BEH) field. Alone among known fundamental fields, the BEH field is “turned on” throughout the universe, rather than flickering in and out of existence and remaining localized. Its existence allowed matter to form in the early universe some 10–11 s after the Big Bang, thanks to the interactions between elementary particles (such as electrons and quarks) and the ever-present BEH field. Higgs and Englert were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2013 in recognition of these achievements.
An immensely inspiring figure for physicists around the world
Fabiola Gianotti
“Besides his outstanding contributions to particle physics, Peter was a very special person, an immensely inspiring figure for physicists around the world, a man of rare modesty, a great teacher and someone who explained physics in a very simple yet profound way,” said CERN’s Director-General Fabiola Gianotti, expressing the emotion felt by the physics community upon his loss. “An important piece of CERN’s history and accomplishments is linked to him. I am very saddened, and I will miss him sorely.”
Peter Higgs’ scientific legacy will extend far beyond the scope of current discoveries. The Higgs boson – the observable “excitation” of the BEH field which he was the first to identify – is linked to some of most intriguing and crucial outstanding questions in fundamental physics. This still quite mysterious particle therefore represents a uniquely promising portal to physics beyond the SM. Since discovering it in 2012, the ATLAS and CMS collaborations have already made impressive progress in constraining its properties – a painstaking scientific study that will form a central plank of research at the LHC, high-luminosity LHC and future colliders for decades to come, promising insights into the many unanswered questions in fundamental science.
Dieter Proch, who made significant contributions to accelerator science, passed away unexpectedly on 27 February 2024 at the age of 80.
Dieter studied physics at the University of Bonn, where he joined the group of Helmut Piel, which had just started working on superconducting accelerator resonators. He then followed Piel, who had accepted an appointment as professor at the newly founded University of Wuppertal, and completed his doctorate on measurements of superconducting accelerator resonators. Soon after, he analysed the serious problem of so-called one-point multipacting in superconducting resonators prevalent at the time. Together with Wuppertal colleagues, he proposed changing the shape of resonators to have a spherical profile, which solved the multipacting problem. Subsequently, Dieter completed research stays at Cornell and CERN, where in 1981 he contributed to the development of spherical superconducting resonators for LEP II to double the energy of LEP. He then took up a permanent position at DESY, where he remained for almost 27 years until June 2009.
During his first years at DESY, Dieter’s focus was on the development of superconducting accelerator structures for the HERA accelerator that was being planned. He was head of the “Superconducting acceleration sections” experimental programme, where he demonstrated organisational talent as well as scientific and technical skills. Within a few years he pushed superconducting resonators from theoretical considerations to preliminary technological studies, and the operation of experimental resonators in the PETRA accelerator.
In the mid-1980s, Dieter took over a group focusing on superconducting accelerator technology. The group was responsible for the design, manufacturing, testing, installation and operation of the superconducting resonators in HERA.
In addition, Dieter was one of the founders of the international TESLA collaboration. Under his leadership, a groundbreaking infrastructure for the treatment, assembly and testing of superconducting accelerator resonators was built at DESY. This development work made it possible to increase the originally targeted field gradients from 25 to 35 MV/m. He organised close collaborations with many laboratories in Germany, Europe, Asia and the US. Particularly noteworthy here are Peking University and Tsinghua University, both of which appointed Dieter as a visiting professor.
As a globally recognised expert and deputy chair of the TESLA technology collaboration, Dieter served on important committees for many years, such as the advisory board for SNS at Oak Ridge. At DESY, the FLASH and European XFEL user systems are based on his fundamental work. The SRF Workshop, which later became a recognised international conference, was always particularly close to his heart. The scientific reputation that DESY enjoys worldwide was significantly influenced by Dieter. He also collaborated on several articles for the Handbook of Accelerator Physics and Engineering.
Dieter’s contributions continue to shape our understanding and advancement of accelerator technology. We thank him very much and will always remember him fondly.
When lead ions collide head-on at the LHC they deposit most of their kinetic energy in the collision zone, forming new matter at extremely high temperatures and energy densities. The hot and dense zone quickly expands and cools down, leading to the production of approximately equal numbers of particles and antiparticles at mid-rapidity. However, in reality the balance between matter and antimatter can be slightly distorted.
The collision starts with matter only, i.e. protons and neutrons from the incoming beam. During the collision process, incoming lead nuclei interact while penetrating each other, and most of their quantum numbers are carried away by particles travelling close to the beam direction. Due to strong interactions among the quarks and gluons, quantum numbers of the colliding ions are transported to mid-rapidity rather than to the ions themselves. This leads to an imbalance of baryons originating from the initial state, which has more baryons than antibaryons.
This matter–antimatter imbalance can be quantified by determining two global system properties: the chemical potentials associated with the electric charge and baryon number (denoted μQ and μB, respectively). In a thermodynamic description, the chemical potentials determine the net electric-charge and baryon-number densities of the system. Thus, μB measures the imbalance between matter and antimatter, with a vanishing value indicating a perfect balance.
In a new, high-precision measurement, the ALICE collaboration reports the most precise characterisation so far of the imbalance between matter and antimatter in collisions between lead nuclei at a centre-of-mass energy per nucleon pair of 5.02 TeV. The study was carried out by measuring the antiparticle-to-particle yield ratios of light-flavour hadrons, which make up the bulk of particles produced in heavy-ion collisions. The measurement using the ALICE central barrel detectors included identified charged pions, protons and multi- strange Ω– baryons, in addition to light nuclei, 3He, triton and the hypertriton (a bound state of a proton, a neutron and a Λ-baryon). The larger baryon content of these light nuclei makes them more sensitive to baryon-asymmetry effects.
The medium created in lead–lead collisions at the LHC is nearly electrically neutral and baryon-number-free at mid-rapidity
The analysis reveals that in head-on lead–ion collisions, for every 1000 produced protons, approximately 986 ± 6 antiprotons are produced. The chemical potentials extracted from the experimental data are μQ = -0.18 ± 0.90 MeV and μB = 0.71 ± 0.45 MeV. These values are compatible with zero, showing that the medium created in lead–lead collisions at the LHC is nearly electrically neutral and baryon-number-free at mid-rapidity. This observation holds for the full centrality range, from collisions where the incoming ions peripherally interact with each other up to the most violent head-on processes, indicating that quantum-number transport at the LHC is independent of the size of the system formed.
The values of μB are shown in figure 1 as a function of the centre-of-mass energy of the colliding nuclei, along with lower-energy measurements at other facilities. The recent ALICE result is indicated by the red solid circle, along with a phenomenological parametrisation of μB. The decreasing trend of μB observed as a function of increasing collision energy indicates that different net-baryon-number density conditions can be explored by varying the beam energy, reaching almost vanishing net-baryon content at the LHC. The inset gives the μB values extracted at two LHC energies. It shows that the new ALICE result is almost one order of magnitude more precise than the previous estimate (violet), thanks to a more refined study of systematic uncertainties.
The present study with improved precision characterises the vanishing baryon-asymmetry at the LHC, posing stringent limits to models describing baryon-number transport effects. Using the data samples collected in LHC Run 3, these studies will be extended to the strangeness sectors, enabling a full characterisation of quantum-number transport at the LHC.
On 20 February the Belle II detector at SuperKEKB in Japan recorded its first e+e– collisions since summer 2022, when the facility entered a scheduled long shutdown. During the shutdown, a new vertex detector incorporating a fully implemented pixel detector, together with an improved beam pipe at the collision point, was installed to better handle the expected increases in luminosity and backgrounds originating from the beams. Furthermore, the radiation shielding around the detector was enhanced, and other measures to improve the data-collection performance were implemented.
Belle II, for which first collisions were recorded in the fully instrumented detector in March 2019, aims to uncover new phenomena through precise analysis of the properties of B mesons and other particles produced by the SuperKEKB accelerator. Its long-term goal is to accumulate a dataset 50 times larger than that of the former Belle experiment.
Climate models are missing an important source of aerosol particles in polar and marine regions, according to new results from the CLOUD experiment at CERN. Atmospheric aerosol particles exert a strong net cooling effect on the climate by making clouds brighter and more extensive, thereby reflecting more sunlight back out to space. However, how aerosol particles form in the atmosphere remains poorly understood, especially in polar and marine regions.
The CLOUD experiment, located in CERN’s East Area, maintains ultra-low contaminant levels and precisely controls all experimental parameters affecting aerosol formation growth under realistic atmospheric conditions. During the past 15 years, the collaboration has uncovered new processes through which aerosol particles form from mixtures of vapours and grow to sizes where they can seed cloud droplets. A beam from the Proton Synchrotron simulates, in the CLOUD chamber, the ionisation from galactic cosmic rays at any altitude in the troposphere.
Globally, the main vapour driving particle formation is thought to be sulphuric acid, stabilised by ammonia. However, ammonia is frequently lacking in polar and marine regions, and models generally underpredict the observed particle-formation rates. The latest CLOUD study challenges this view, by showing that iodine oxoacids can replace the role of ammonia and act synergistically with sulphuric acid to greatly enhance particle-formation rates.
“Our results show that climate models need to include iodine oxoacids along with sulphuric acid and other vapours,” says CLOUD spokesperson Jasper Kirkby. “This is particularly important in polar regions, which are highly sensitive to small changes in aerosol particles and clouds. Here, increased aerosol and clouds actually have a warming effect by absorbing infrared radiation otherwise lost to space, and then re-radiating it back down to the surface.”
The new findings build on earlier CLOUD studies which showed that iodine oxoacids rapidly form particles even in the complete absence of sulphuric acid. At iodine oxoacid concentrations that are typical of marine and polar regions (between 0.1 and 5 relative to those of sulphuric acid), the CLOUD data show that the formation rates of sulphuric acid particles are between 10 and 10,000 times faster than previous estimates.
“Global marine iodine emissions have tripled in the past 70 years due to thinning sea ice and rising ozone concentrations, and this trend is likely to continue,” adds Kirkby. “The resultant increase of marine aerosol particles and clouds, suggested by our findings, will have created a positive feedback that accelerates the loss of sea ice in polar regions, while simultaneously introducing a cooling effect at lower latitudes. The next generation of climate models will need to take iodine vapours and their synergy with sulphuric acid into account.”
Consisting only of an electron and a positron, positronium (Ps) offers unique exploration of a purely leptonic matter–antimatter system. Traditionally, experiments have relied on formation processes that produce clouds of Ps with a large velocity distribution, limiting the precision of spectroscopic studies due to the large Doppler broadening of the Ps transition lines. Now, after almost 10 years of effort, the AEgIS collaboration at CERN’s Antiproton Decelerator has experimentally demonstrated laser-cooling of Ps for the first time, opening new possibilities for antimatter research.
“This is a breakthrough for the antimatter community that has been awaited for almost 30 years, and which has both a broad physics and technological impact,” says AEgIS physics coordinator Benjamin Rienacker of the University of Liverpool. “Precise Ps spectroscopy experiments could reach the sensitivity to probe the gravitational interaction in a two-body system (with 50% on-shell antimatter mass and made of point-like particles) in a cleaner way than with antihydrogen. Cold ensembles of Ps could also enable Bose–Einstein condensation of an antimatter compound system that provides a path to a coherent gamma-ray source, while allowing precise measurements of the positron mass and fine structure constant, among other applications.”
Laser cooling, which was applied to antihydrogen atoms for the first time by the ALPHA experiment in 2021 (CERN Courier May/June 2021 p9), slows atoms gradually during the course of many cycles of photon absorption and emission. This is normally done using a narrowband laser, which emits light with a small frequency range. By contrast, the AEgIS team uses a pulsed alexandrite-based laser with high intensity, large bandwidth and long pulse duration to meet the cooling requirements. The system enabled the AEgIS team to decrease the temperature of the Ps atoms from 380 K to 170 K, corresponding to a decrease in the transversal component of the Ps velocity from 54 to 37 km s–1.
The feat presents a major technical challenge since, unlike antihydrogen, Ps is unstable and annihilates with a lifetime of only 142 ns. The use of a large bandwidth laser has the advantage of cooling a large fraction of the Ps cloud while increasing the effective lifetime, resulting in a higher amount of Ps after cooling for further experimentation.
“Our results can be further improved, starting from a cryogenic Ps source, which we also know how to build in AEgIS, to reach our dream temperature of 10 K or lower,” says AEgIS spokesperson Ruggero Caravita of INFN-TIFPA. “Other ideas are to add a second cooling stage with a narrower spectral bandwidth set to a detuning level closer to resonance, or by coherent laser cooling.”
As winter bids farewell, the recommissioning of the CERN accelerator complex is gathering pace, with diverse communities eagerly awaiting particle beams in their experiments. Following the year-end technical stop, beam entered Linac4 on 5 February, two days ahead of schedule. It was then sent to the PS Booster and reached the PS on 21 February. Following SPS beam commissioning beginning in March, the first particle beams are scheduled to enter the LHC on 11 March, initially with one to a few bunches at most.
The expectations for 2024 are high. For the LHC, the focus is on proton–proton luminosity production, aiming at an unprecedented accumulation of up to 90 fb–1. This, together with the luminosity forecast for the 2025 run, should provide a sizeable analysis dataset to keep physicists busy during Long Shutdown 3. The 2024 LHC run will conclude with lead–lead collisions, scheduled from 6 to 28 October.
The injector chain also has an ambitious year ahead, serving a busy fixed-target programme. Physics is set to start in the PS East Area on 22 March, followed by the PS n_TOF facility on 25 March. Physics in ISOLDE, downstream of the PS Booster, will start on 8 April, followed by the SPS North Area on 10 April. The antimatter factory is set to start delivering antiprotons to its experiments on 22 April, while the AWAKE facility will run for 10 weeks and the SPS HiRadMat facility for four one-week runs.
Beyond this busy physics programme, many machine development studies and tests are planned in all the machines. One of these tests will take place between mid-March and early June to configure the Linac3 source to produce magnesium ions, which will be accelerated in Linac3, injected into LEIR, and possibly even into the PS. This test will help assess the feasibility and performance of magnesium beams in the accelerator complex, for potential future applications in the LHC and the SPS North Area.
As the countdown to 11 March continues, the operations and expert teams are working diligently to prepare the machines and the beams for another successful physics run.
Supernova remnants (SNRs) are excellent candidates for the production of galactic cosmic rays. Still, as we approach the “knee” region in the cosmic-ray spectrum (in the few-PeV regime), other astrophysical sources may contribute. A recent study by the High Energy Stereoscopic System (H.E.S.S.) observatory in Namibia sheds light on one such source, called SS 433, a microquasar located nearly 18,000 light-years away. It is a binary system formed by a compact object, such as a neutron star or a stellar-mass black hole, and a companion star, where the former is continuously accreting matter from the latter and emitting relativistic jets perpendicular to the accretion plane.
The jets of SS 433 are oriented perpendicular to our line of sight and constantly distort the SNR shell (called W50, or the Manatee Nebula) that was created during the black-hole formation. Radio observations reveal the precessing motion of the jets up to 0.3 light-years from the black hole, disappearing thereafter. At approximately 81 light-years from the black hole, they reappear as collimated large-scale structures in the X- and gamma-ray bands, termed “outer jets”. These jets are a fascinating probe into particle-acceleration sites, as interactions between jets and their environments can lead to the acceleration of particles that produce gamma rays.
Excellent resolution
The H.E.S.S. collaboration collected and analysed more than 200 hours of data from SS 433 to investigate the acceleration and propagation of electrons in its outer jets. Being an imaging air–shower Cherenkov telescope, H.E.S.S. offers excellent energy and angular resolutions. The gamma-ray image showed two emission regions along the outer jets, which overlap with previously observed X-ray sources. To study the energy dependence of the emission, the full energy range was split into three parts, indicating that the highest energy emission is concentrated closer to the central source, i.e. at the base of the outer jets. A proposed explanation for the observations is that electrons are accelerated to TeV energies, generate high-energy gamma rays via inverse Compton scattering, and subsequently lose energy as they propagate outwards to generate the observed X-rays.
Monte Carlo simulations modelled the morphology of the gamma-ray emission and revealed a significant deceleration in the velocity of the outer jets at their bases, indicating a possible shock region. With a lower limit on the cut-off energy for electron injection into this region, the acceleration energies were found to be > 200 TeV at 68% confidence level. Additionally, protons and heavier nuclei can also be accelerated in these regions and reach much higher energies as they are affected by weaker energy losses and carry higher total energy than electrons.
These jets are a fascinating probe into particle-acceleration sites
SS 433 is, unfortunately, ruled out as a contributor to the observed cosmic-ray flux on Earth. Considering the age of the system to be 30,000 years and proton energies of 1 PeV, the distance traversed by a cosmic-ray particle is much smaller than even the lowest estimates for the distance to SS 433. Even with a significantly larger galactic diffusion coefficient or an age 40 times older, it remains incompatible with other measurements and the highest estimate on the age of the nebula. While proton acceleration does occur in the outer jets of SS 433, these particles don’t play a part in the cosmic-ray flux measured on Earth.
This study, by revealing the energy-dependent morphology of a galactic microquasar and constraining jet velocities at large distances, firmly establishes shocks in microquasar jets as potent particle-acceleration sites and offers valuable insights for future modelling of these astrophysical structures. It opens up exciting possibilities in the search for galactic cosmic-ray sources at PeV energies and extragalactic ones at EeV energies.
Since being delivered to the International Space Station (ISS) by Space Shuttle Endeavour in 2011, the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS-02) has recorded more than 200 billion cosmic-ray events with energies extending into the multi-TeV range. Although never designed to be serviceable, a major intervention to the 7.5 tonne detector in 2019/2020, during which astronauts replaced a failing cooling system, extended the lifetime of AMS significantly (CERN Courier March/April 2020 p9). Now, the international collaboration is preparing a new mission to upgrade the detector itself, by adding an additional tracker layer and associated thermal radiators. If all goes to plan, the upgrade will allow physicists to gather key data relating to a mysterious excess of cosmic rays at high energies.
Precise dataset
The increasingly precise AMS-02 dataset reveals numerous unexplained features in cosmic-ray spectra (CERN Courier December 2016 p26). In particular, a high-energy excess in the relative positron flux does not follow the single power-law behaviour expected from standard cosmic-ray interactions with the interstellar medium. While known astrophysical sources such as pulsars cannot yet be ruled out, the spectrum fits well to dark-matter models. If the excess events are indeed due to the annihilation of dark-matter particles, a smoking gun would be a high-energy cut-off in the spectrum. By increasing the AMS acceptance by 300%, the addition of a new tracker layer is the only way that the experiment can gather the necessary data to test this hypothesis before the scheduled decommissioning of the ISS in 2030.
“By 2030 AMS will extend the energy range of the positron flux measurement from 1.4 to 2 TeV and reduce the error by a factor of two compared to current data,” says AMS spokesperson Sam Ting of MIT. “This will allow us to measure the anisotropy accurately to permit a separation between dark matter and pulsars at 99.93% confidence.”
Led by MIT, and assembled and tested at CERN/ESA with NASA support, AMS is a unique particle-physics experiment in space. It consists of a transition radiation detector to identify electrons and positrons, a permanent magnet together with nine silicon-tracker layers to measure momentum and identify different particle species, two banks of time-of-flight counters, veto counters, a ring-image Cherenkov counter and an electromagnetic calorimeter.
The additional tracker layer, 2.6 m in diameter, 30 cm thick and weighing 250 kg, will be installed on the top-most part of the detector. The tracking sensors will populate the opposite faces of an ultralight carbon plane specifically developed for AMS to fulfil thermoelastic stability requirements, surrounded by an octagonal carbon frame that also provides the main structural interface during launch. The powering and readout electronics for the new layer will generate additional heat that is rejected to space by radiators at its periphery. Two new radiators will therefore be integrated into the detector prior to the installation of the layer, while a third, much larger power-distribution radiator (PDS) will also be installed to recuperate the performance of one of the AMS main radiators, which has suffered degradation and radiation damage after 13 years in low-Earth orbit. In January, a prototype of the PDS, manufactured and supported by aerospace company AIDC in Taiwan, was delivered to CERN for tests.
First steps for the upgrade took place in 2021, and the US Department of Energy together with NASA approved the mission in March 2023. The testing of components and construction of prototypes at institutes around the world is proceeding quickly in view of a planned launch in February 2026. The silicon strips, 8 m2 of which will cover both faces of the layer, were produced by Hamamatsu and are being assembled into “ladders” of different lengths at IHEP in Beijing. These are then shipped to INFN Perugia in Italy, where they are joined together to form a quarter plane. Once fully characterised, the eight quarters will be installed at CERN on both faces of the mechanical plane and integrated with electronics, thermal hardware and the necessary brackets. Crucial for the new tracker layer to survive the harsh launch environment and to maintain, once in orbit, the sensor within five microns relative to ground measurements, are the large carbon plane and the shielding cupolas, developed at CERN, as well as the NASA brackets that will attach the layer module to AMS. This hardware represents a major R&D programme in its own right.
By 2030 AMS will extend the energy range of the positron flux measurement from 1.4 to 2 TeV and reduce the error by a factor of two
Following the first qualification model in late 2023, consisting of a quarter of the entire assembled layer, AMS engineers are now working towards a full-size model that will take the system closer to flight. The main tests to simulate the environment that the layer will experience during launch and once in orbit are vibrational and thermal-vacuum, to be performed in Italy (INFN PG) and in Germany (IABG), while the sensors’ position in the layer will be fully mapped at CERN and then tested with beams from the SPS, explains AMS chief engineer Corrado Gargiulo of CERN: “Everything is going very, very fast. This is a requirement, otherwise we arrive too late at the ISS for the upgrade to make sense.”
The new module is being designed to fit snuggly into the nose of a SpaceX Dragon rocket. Once safely delivered to the ISS, a robotic arm will dispatch the module to AMS where astronauts will, through a series of extravehicular activities (EVAs), perform the final mounting. Training for the delicate EVAs is well underway at NASA’s Johnson Space Center. Nearby, at the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory, the astronauts are trained in a large swimming pool on how to attach the different components under the watchful eyes of safety and NASA divers, among them Gargiulo (see “Space choreography” images). As with the EVAs required to replace the cooling system, a number of custom-built tools and detailed procedures have to be developed and tested.
“If the previous ones were considered high-risk surgery, the EVAs for the new upgrade are unprecedented for the several different locations where astronauts will be required to work in much tighter and less accessible spaces,” explains Ken Bollweg, NASA manager of AMS, who is leading the operations aspect.
Since its inception a decade ago, the Future Circular Collider (FCC) collaboration has evolved in scope and scale – especially since the completion of the conceptual design report in 2018, when directed efforts were made to broaden the project’s reach and attract new partners. Such endeavours are crucial considering the ambitious nature of the FCC project and the immense global collaboration required to bring it to fruition.
Today, the collaboration brings together more than 130 institutes from 31 countries. Contributions from members span a broad spectrum encompassing theoretical and experimental particle physics, applied science, engineering, computing and technology. Ongoing collaborations with research centres internationally are pushing the performance of key technologies such as superconducting radio-frequency cavities and klystrons, as well as magnets based on novel high-temperature superconductors (see “Advancing hardware“). Increased global collaboration is a prerequisite for success, and links with high-tech industry will be essential to further advance the implementation of the FCC.
The proposed four-interaction point layout for the FCC is not only designed to offer the broadest physics coverage, but makes it a future collider commensurate with the size and aspirations of the current high-energy physics community. The attractiveness of the FCC is also reflected in the composition of participants at annual conferences, which shows a good balance between early-career and more senior researchers, geographical diversity, and gender. The latter currently stands at a 70:30 male-to-female ratio, which has been increasing during the course of the feasibility study.
Global working group
The FCC feasibility study has established a global working group with a mandate to engage countries with mature communities, a long-standing participation in CERN’s programmes, and the potential to contribute substantially to the project’s long-term scientific objectives. In addition, an informal forum of national contacts allows exchanges between physicists from different countries and the development of collaborations inside FCC. Each interested country has one or two national contacts who have the opportunity to report regularly on the development of their FCC activities.
Drawing parallels with the LHC and HL-LHC successes, CERN’s unique experience with large-scale scientific collaborations has been invaluable in shaping the cohesive and productive environment of the FCC collaboration. It is imperative to recognise the dedication of existing members while addressing the need for new contributors to bolster the collaboration. As the FCC considers the next stage of its scientific journey, potential partners are invited to bring their unique skills and perspectives.
First discussions on the governance and financial considerations for the FCC project are taking place in the CERN Council. The models aim to provide a structure for both the construction and operation phases, and assume compatibility with the CERN Convention, while also taking into account the United Nations’ sustainable development goals. In parallel, the organisational structure of the FCC experiment collaborations is being discussed. Given the inherently cooperative and distributed nature of these collaborations, a relatively lightweight structure will be put forth, based on openness, equality at the level of participating institutes and a wide consultation within the collaboration for key decisions.
Since 2021, the FCC has implemented a robust organisational structure, acting under the authority of the CERN Council, that facilitates efficient communication and coordination among its members. Looking ahead, the path to the governance model required for the FCC project and operation phases is both exciting and challenging. Importantly, it requires the long-term engagement and support of participants from CERN’s member and associate member states, and from the non-member states, whose community at CERN has been growing with the LHC, particularly from institutes located in North America and the Asia-Pacific regions. As the project evolves further, it is crucial to refine and adapt the collaboration model to ensure the efficient allocation of resources and sustained momentum.
The FCC offers a multitude of R&D opportunities, and the collaborative spirit that defines it promises to shape the future of particle physics. As we go forward, the FCC collaboration beckons individuals and institutions to contribute to the next chapter in our exploration of the fundamental laws and building blocks of the universe.
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