The Three Ring Circus

The capability and performance of the SSC can be substantially improved by adding a third ring. In this design two collider rings operate at fixed energy to provide colliding beams. The third ring is used to accelerate beam to collision energy and transfer it into each collider ring. This separation of functions results in three important improvements for the SSC. First, the collider magnets can be simplified in design and reduced in size since they need not service injection at low energy and acceleration. Second, the accelerator ring can be used to maintain peak luminosity in the collider continuously and indefinitely. Third, the accelerator ring can also be used to service a dedicated fixed-target physics program without conflict with the collider program. Using the superferric magnet design, the collider magnets can be reduced in size and all three magnets can be housed in a common cryostat. The accelerator and collider rings can be made operationally independent (quench isolation, magnetic fields, experimental bypass). The estimated additional cost to the SSC project is ~10%.