Speaker
Description
CERN’s scientific program extends well beyond its flagship collider experiments, thanks to early considered flexibility and strategic choices when its diverse and flexible injector chain and accelerator infrastructure were and are conceived. This allows for a broad ecosystem of fixed-target, antimatter, rare-isotope, neutron, neutrino and forward-physics activities, exploited through the Laboratory’s accelerator complex, experimental areas and shared technical infrastructure. Building on these capabilities, following the successful Physics-Beyond-Collider initiative (PBC), CERN has launched the Non-Collider Physics Roadmap (NCPR), covering the period 2027–2046, to establish a coherent long-term framework for the evolution of this diverse program alongside the High-Luminosity LHC and future major accelerator projects.
After a short recap of PBC objectives and results, this presentation will introduce the motivation, scope and process of the NCPR and illustrate how CERN currently prepares and analyses roadmap options and pathways. It will highlight how beams, experimental areas and common infrastructure can support complementary scientific programs over the years to come, provided that their requirements, constraints and opportunities are identified sufficiently early. In line with CERN’s long-term plan, a selection of possible future projects, combined with upgrade and required consolidation activities, will illustrate some of the presently considered roadmap pathways.
Beyond the immediate CERN roadmap, the NCPR may provide an opportunity to further discuss how a diverse scientific ecosystem can be considered collectively. Future opportunities can be assessed in terms of scientific complementarity, maturity, infrastructure requirements, resources, timelines and uniqueness within a given laboratory and the worldwide landscape. Fitting to this conference scope, a future major accelerator facility should therefore be conceived from the outset not solely as an e⁺e⁻ collider, but as a versatile scientific infrastructure capable of supporting a broad and evolving long-term research program.