The CERN Large Hadron Collider as a Tool to Study High-Energy Density Matter

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN will generate two extremely powerful 7 TeV proton beams. Each beam will consist of 2808 bunches with an intensity per bunch of 1.15×10¹¹ protons so that the total number of protons in one beam will be about 3×10¹⁴ and the total energy will be 362 MJ. Each bunch will have a duration of 0.5 ns and two successive bunches will be separated by 25 ns, while the power distribution in the radial direction will be Gaussian with a standard deviation, σ=0.2  mm. The total duration of the beam will be about 89  μs. Using a 2D hydrodynamic code, we have carried out numerical simulations of the thermodynamic and hydrodynamic response of a solid copper target that is irradiated with one of the LHC beams. These calculations show that only the first few hundred proton bunches will deposit a high specific energy of 400  kJ/g that will induce exotic states of high energy density in matter.