The Large Hadron–Electron Collider (LHeC) is designed to move the field of deep inelastic scattering (DIS) to the energy and intensity frontier of particle physics. Exploiting energy-recovery technology, it collides a novel, intense electron beam with a proton or ion beam from the High-Luminosity Large Hadron Collider (HL-LHC). The accelerator and interaction region are designed for concurrent electron–proton and proton–proton operations. This report represents an update to the LHeC’s conceptual design report (CDR), published in 2012. It comprises new results on the parton structure of the proton and heavier nuclei, QCD dynamics, and electroweak and top-quark physics. It is shown how the LHeC will open a new chapter of nuclear particle physics by extending the accessible kinematic range of lepton–nucleus scattering by several orders of magnitude. Due to its enhanced luminosity and large energy and the cleanliness of the final hadronic states, the LHeC has a strong Higgs physics programme and its own discovery potential for new physics. Building on the 2012 CDR, this report contains a detailed updated design for the energy-recovery electron linac (ERL), including a new lattice, magnet and superconducting radio-frequency technology, and further components. Challenges of energy recovery are described, and the lower-energy, high-current, three-turn ERL facility, PERLE at Orsay, is presented, which uses the LHeC characteristics serving as a development facility for the design and operation of the LHeC. An updated detector design is presented corresponding to the acceptance, resolution, and calibration goals that arise from the Higgs and parton-density-function physics programmes. This paper also presents novel results for the Future Circular Collider in electron–hadron (FCC-eh) mode, which utilises the same ERL technology to further extend the reach of DIS to even higher centre-of-mass energies.

We construct an improved implementation for combining transverse-momentum-dependent (TMD) factorization and collinear factorization. TMD factorization is suitable for low transverse momentum physics, while collinear factorization is suitable for high transverse momenta and for a cross section integrated over transverse momentum. The result is a modified version of the standard W + Y prescription traditionally used in the Collins-Soper-Sterman (CSS) formalism and related approaches. We further argue that questions regarding the shape and Q-dependence of the cross sections at lower Q are largely governed by the matching to the Y -term.

We survey the current phenomenological status of semi-inclusive deeply inelastic scattering at moderate hard scales and in the limit of very large transverse momentum. As the transverse momentum becomes comparable to or larger than the overall hard scale, the differential cross sections should be calculable with fixed order perturbative (pQCD) methods, while small transverse momentum (TMD factorization) approximations should eventually break down. We find large disagreement between HERMES and COMPASS data and fixed order calculations done with modern parton densities, even in regions of kinematics where such calculations should be expected to be very accurate. Possible interpretations are suggested.