An assessment of the antiproton-proton option for the SSC

The Conceptual Design Report (CDR) for the Superconducting Super Collider (SSC) describes a proton-proton collider with an energy of 20 TeV per beam and a maximum luminosity of 10{sup 33}cm{sup {minus}2}s{sup {minus}1} per collision point. This directly responds to the recommendation made by the High Energy Physics Advisory Panel to the US Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation in July 1983. That recommendation called for the ``immediate initiation of a multi-TeV high-luminosity proton-proton collider project with the goal of physics experiments at this facility at the earliest Possible date.`` The primary Parameters of the SSC in the Conceptual Design Report have been chosen taking account of both the physics discovery reach of the machine and accelerator physics considerations. The endeavor of the study reported here was to compare the feasibility of an antiproton-proton collider with the proton-proton collider presented in the SSC Conceptual Design Report. The rapid advances in the technology of p{bar p} colliders at CERN and Fermilab suggest that p{bar p} might be a viable alternative to a PP collider (or might be a first stage of an eventual p{bar p} collider). There is Potentially a large cost saving from eliminating one 20 TeV ring of magnets since the protons and antiprotons share the same ring. Following this suggestion, workshops at the University of Chicago and at Snowmass have provided a forum for these ideas. These reports formed the starting point for our study