Lancaster professor leads team helping deliver major upgrade to Large Hadron Collider

The prototype cryomodule has taken almost two years of assembly work at Daresbury Laboratory and contains around 10,000 components, of which more than 5,000 are unique.

This upgrade, known as the High Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC), will rely on a number of key innovations that push accelerator technology well beyond its present limits. Among these are compact superconducting “crab” cavities which will rotate the proton bunches to provide head-on collisions in the two largest detectors: ATLAS and CMS. The UK has been a key partner in the development of compact crab cavities for HL-LHC since 2011.

Lancaster engineering professor Graeme Burt is chair of the Particle Accelerator Engineering Network and the project manager and co-lead for the HL-LHC-UK which delivered the cryomodules.

The team at Daresbury have built upon existing expertise in mechanical and radio frequency engineering, cryogenics, instrumentation and controls, vacuum science, survey and alignment, welding, and project management. This exceptionally challenging project has also supported significant upskilling of staff with support for CERN, and the building of substantial new infrastructure for cryomodule assembly at Daresbury which will be used in future projects.

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is one of the largest scientific experiments ever built. Over the last 13 years, the LHC has opened up a new frontier of discovery in fundamental particle physics, providing experimental data for a global user community of more than 9,000 scientists.

To further increase its discovery potential, a major upgrade of the LHC will be undertaken in the 2020s to increase its instantaneous luminosity (rate of collisions) by a factor of five beyond the original design value and the integrated luminosity (total number of collisions) by a factor of ten.

Operating at 2 K (2 degrees above absolute zero), these cavities are housed in complex, state-of-the-art modules (called cryomodules) which provides precise alignment, mechanical support, cryogenic cooling, thermal and magnetic shielding, tuning capability, vacuum isolation, radio frequency power, monitoring of key parameters, and all other connections to the outside world.

Niklas Templeton, technical manager for the cryomodule build, said: “The state-of-the-art cryomodule is the first of its kind and a huge coup for the UK team to have built. After making several design contributions to the cryomodule including the thermal screen, cold and warm magnetic shields, the engineering team developed and delivered a suite assembly infrastructure and tooling for the build. The team also delivered over 900 pages of detailed procedures which form the build quality assurance. Every step from cleanroom assembly to welding, cryostating and testing had to developed and approved before execution. The team overcame many complex challenges which developed and demonstrated their multi-disciplinary skillsets and commitment. Truly great work!”

The team at Daresbury have built upon existing expertise in mechanical and rf engineering, cryogenics, instrumentation and controls, vacuum science, survey and alignment, welding, and project management. This exceptionally challenging project has also supported significant upskilling of staff with support for CERN, and the building of substantial new infrastructure for cryomodule assembly at Daresbury which will be used in future projects.