LHCb Upgrade II: Maximising HL-LHC Discovery Potential

The LHCb Upgrade II proposal addresses the goal set out in the European Strategy for Particle Physics of exploiting fully the physics potential of the High Luminosity LHC.

The experiment is designed to exploit the high production rate of heavy flavoured (beauty and charm) particles in LHC collisions, enabling precision searches for physics beyond the Standard Model through loop processes.

LHCb Upgrade II builds on the existing infrastructure of the LHCb experiment, with upgrades to all subdetector systems and new elements that will provide capability to resolve particles from different collisions in the same bunch crossing through the use of precision timing information.

Data will be recorded at much higher rates than currently possible, leading to a broad and exciting physics programme, unmatched by any other experiment.

This proposal is for a 3-year R&D project within the UK to develop specific, strategic technologies that will enable the physics goals of LHCb Upgrade II to be achieved.

This will allow us to develop links with UK industry and continue to lead the international collaboration through preparation of the LHCb Upgrade II framework TDR as well as subdetector-specific TDRs.

The UK groups have particular interests in addressing challenges in vertexing and tracking, charged hadron identification and data processing by developing strategic technologies, and the project is structured into workpackages accordingly.

We plan that this initial project be followed by further stages for prototyping and construction of the subdetectors, and eventually to operation of the experiment and analysis of the data. Requests for funding of these later stages will of course be made separately.