Part-3 of Project X: Accelerator Reference Design, Physics Opportunities, Broader Impacts. The proposed Project X proton accelerator at Fermilab, with multi-MW beam power and highly versatile beam formatting, will be a unique world-class facility to explore particle physics at the intensity frontier. Concurrently, however, it can also facilitate important scientific research beyond traditional particle physics and provide unprecedented opportunities in applications to problems of great national importance in the nuclear energy and security sector. Part 1 is available as arXiv:1306.5022 [physics.acc-ph] and Part 2 is available as arXiv:1306.5009 [hep-ex].
The discovery of a Higgs-like boson with mass near 126 GeV, at the LHC, has reignited interest in future energy frontier colliders. We propose here a proton-proton (pp) collider in a 100 km ring, with center of mass (CM) energy of ~100 TeV which would have substantial discovery potential for new heavy particles and new physics beyond the Standard Model. In the case that LHC experiments have already found exotic resonances or heavy partner particles, this collider could fill out the tower of resonances (thus e.g. confirming an extra dimension) or the full suite of partner particles (e.g. for supersymmetry). The high luminosity of the new collider would enable unique precision studies of the Higgs boson (including Higgs self coupling and rare Higgs decays), and its higher energy would allow more complete measurements of vector boson scattering to help elucidate electroweak symmetry breaking. We also discuss an e+e- collider in the same 100 km ring with CM energies from 90 to 350 GeV. This collider would enable precision electroweak measurements up to the ttbar threshold, and serve as a Higgs factory.
