LHCb upgrade: CERN collaboration responds to UK funding cut

Later this year, CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and its huge experiments will shutdown for the High Luminosity upgrade. When complete in 2030, the particle-collision rate in the LHC will be increased by a factor of 10 and the experiments will be upgraded so that they can better capture and analyse the results of these collisions. This will allow physicists to study particle interactions at unprecedented precision and could even reveal new physics beyond the Standard Model.

Earlier this year, however, the UK government announced that it will no longer fund the upgrade of the LHCb experiment on the LHC, which is run by a collaboration of more than 1700 physicists worldwide. The UK had promised to contribute about £50 million to the upgrade – which is a significant chunk of the overall cost.

In this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast I am in conversation with the particle physicist Tim Gershon, who is based at the UK’s University of Warwick. Gershon is spokesperson-elect for the LHCb collaboration and is playing a leading role in the upgrade.

Gershon explains that UK participation and leadership has been crucial for the success of LHCb and cautions that the future of the experiment and the future of UK particle physics have been imperilled by the funding cut.

We also chat about recent discoveries made by LHCb and look forward to what new physics the experiment could find after the upgrade.