We present the technical proposal for the Atom Interferometer CERN Experiment (AICE), a 𝒪(100) m vertical atom interferometer to be installed against the wall of the PX46 access shaft to the LHC. AICE is conceived as a versatile and flexible long-baseline atom-interferometry facility whose primary scientific goal is probing for bosonic ultralight dark matter (ULDM) in a mass range inaccessible to other experiments, with a secondary goal of pioneering the exploration of gravitational waves (GWs) with frequencies in the range ∼0.03-3 Hz as a pathfinder for future longer-baseline detectors. The initial configuration employs ultracold ^87Sr atoms in a single-photon 698-nm interferometer with three shaft-based atom sources in a multi-source gradiometer geometry, supported by one surface reference source for laser stabilisation and diagnostics, to target scalar ULDM. Operation with ^88Sr will give sensitivity to axion-like particles (ALPs), vector ULDM with B-L couplings and violation of the principle of equivalence, while a ^171Yb upgrade will improve the sensitivity to B-L couplings and equivalence violations. Probing the Einstein equivalence principle (EP) and measuring α will proceed in parallel with the ULDM searches. A conceptual feasibility study and a detailed technical implementation study have established that PX46 is a uniquely mature and implementation-ready site, with no technical showstoppers. Completing site preparation works during LS3 would enable the subsequent installation and operation of AICE without impacting HL-LHC operations. The detector design builds on the VLBAI and MAGIS experiments and the AION-10 Technical Design Report, scaling the strontium gradiometer architecture to the ∼100 m baseline. AICE is endorsed by the TVLBAI Proto-Collaboration, comprising 57 institutions in 22 countries.
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