The LHCspin project

The goal of LHCspin is to develop, in the next few years, innovative solutions and cutting-edge technologies to access the field of spin physics by exploring a unique kinematic regime and by exploiting new reaction processes. In fact, a polarized gaseous target, operated in combination with the high-energy, high-intensity LHC beams and the highly performing LHCb particle detector, has the potential to open new physics frontiers and deepen our understanding of the intricacies of the strong interaction in the non-perturbative regime of QCD. This configuration, with center of mass energies up to 115 GeV, using both proton and heavy-ion beams covers a wide backward rapidity region, including the poorly explored high x-Bjorken and high x -Feynman regimes. This ambitious task poses its basis in the recent installation of an unpolarized gas target (SMOG2) in the LHCb spectrometer resulting not only in a unique project itself, but also in an invaluable playground for its polarized upgrade. An overview of the physics potential, a description of the LHCspin experimental setup, and the first output the of SMOG2 system are presented.