Deep Inelastic Scattering at the TeV Energy Scale and the LHeC Project

As is clear from the varied contributions to this workshop concerned with ongoing work on HERA data, much is still being learned from the world’s first electron proton (ep) collider [ 1]. Measurements based on the final HERA data remain of high importance for the physics of strong interactions and proton structure in general and in particular for applications at the LHC [ 2]. By now, our understanding of many smallQ and low x phenomena in Deep Inelastic Scattering (DIS) is limited by experimental systematics and theoretical uncertainties, rather than by statistical precision. However, particularly for searches for new particles and for the understanding of electroweak effects, the principle limitation is often the available integrated luminosity. Without doubt, energy-frontier physics will be dominated for the foreseeable future by the proton and heavy ion beams of the LHC, whose unprecedented energy and intensity herald a new era in the field. It is reasonable to ask whether these proton beams could be exploited as part of a new high performance ep and electron-ion (eA) ‘Large Hadron electron Collider’ (LHeC) [ 3, 4], complementing the LHC pp and AA programme and a possible pure lepton collider at the TeV energy scale. A 2006 study of the possibility of adding an electron beam to the LHC complex [ 3] suggested that ep collisions with an electron energy Ee = 70 GeV and a luminosity of order 10 cms could be achieved at moderate power consumpLepton-Proton Scattering Facilities