Uploaded November 2022 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
The concept of using colliding beams of oppositely charged muons dates back to the late 1960s, with F.F. Tikhonin, G.I. Budker and A.N. Skrinski. The interest of the muon collider has been recently revived as the latter promises a sustainable path towards very high energy and the first International Muon Collider Collaboration workshop took place at CERN from October 11 to October 14, 2022 (see https://muoncollider.web.cern.ch/welcome-page-muon-collider-website and https://indico.cern.ch/event/1175126/ ). High-energy lepton colliders combine cutting edge discovery potential with precision measurements. Because leptons are point-like particles, in contrast to protons, they can achieve comparable physics at lower centre-of-mass energies. The relative physics reach depends on the channels considered but a 10 TeV lepton collider would be comparable to a 100 TeV proton-proton collider. The large muon mass suppresses synchrotron radiation and enables the use of circular accelerator and collider rings. However, the short muon lifetime limits the number of turns in these rings and all the challenges of such a collider are linked to the fact that muons are decaying particles. Despite these many challenges, no showstopper has been identified yet and a muon collider is a very promising option for the future of the high-energy physics.
Contributors
Director: Fichet, Jacques Herve
Co-Producer: Metral, Elias
00:20 - What's a Muon Collider
01:17 - What's special about it
02:46 - What's the goal
04:10 - Hope for a discovery machine
The concept of using colliding beams of oppositely charged muons dates back to the late 1960s, with F.F. Tikhonin, G.I. Budker and A.N. Skrinski. The interest of the muon collider has been recently revived as the latter promises a sustainable path towards very high energy and the first International Muon Collider Collaboration workshop took place at CERN from October 11 to October 14, 2022 (see https://muoncollider.web.cern.ch/welcome-page-muon-collider-website and https://indico.cern.ch/event/1175126/ ). High-energy lepton colliders combine cutting edge discovery potential with precision measurements. Because leptons are point-like particles, in contrast to protons, they can achieve comparable physics at lower centre-of-mass energies. The relative physics reach depends on the channels considered but a 10 TeV lepton collider would be comparable to a 100 TeV proton-proton collider. The large muon mass suppresses synchrotron radiation and enables the use of circular accelerator and collider rings. However, the short muon lifetime limits the number of turns in these rings and all the challenges of such a collider are linked to the fact that muons are decaying particles. Despite these many challenges, no showstopper has been identified yet and a muon collider is a very promising option for the future of the high-energy physics.
Contributors
Director: Fichet, Jacques Herve
Co-Producer: Metral, Elias
00:20 - What's a Muon Collider
01:17 - What's special about it
02:46 - What's the goal
04:10 - Hope for a discovery machine
