The Undulator Radiation Collider: An Energy Efficient Design For A $\sqrt{s}=10^{15}$ GeV Collider

Abstract

We discuss the main factors affecting the design of accelerators aiming to investigate physics at the GUT scale. The most important constraints turn out to be the energy used and the time taken to accumulate sufficient luminosity. We propose a photon collider design, where the photons are generated by undulator radiation from high energy muon beams. This reduces the energy requirements by a factor of more than $10^7$ compared to a pp collider. Much of the reduction in energy use is achieved by using a periodic magnetic field, and by splitting the muon wavefunctions spatially to reduce the photon beam divergence; these prevent a cascade of secondary reactions at the collision points. The proposed collider would be powered by (part of) a Dyson swarm constructed around the Sun, and efficient use of energy will be important to reduce the time needed to reach the desired number of collisions. We also discuss why a neutrino collider would be much less efficient.

17 pages, 3 figures. Changes from v2: added discussions of spatial superposition of muon beam to achieve small photon divergence and neutrino colliders, minor changes elsewhere

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