• B.J. Holzer, S. Bettoni, O.S. Brüning, S. Russenschuck
  CERN, Geneva
• R. Appleby
  UMAN, Manchester
• J.B. Dainton, L.N.S. Thompson
  Cockcroft Institute, Warrington, Cheshire
• M. Klein
  The University of Liverpool, Liverpool
• A. Kling, B. Nagorny, U. Schneekloth
  DESY, Hamburg
• P. Kostka
  DESY Zeuthen, Zeuthen
• A. Polini
  INFN-Bologna, Bologna

The LHeC aims at colliding hadron-lepton beams with center of mass energies in the TeV scale. For this purpose the existing LHC storage ring is extended by a high energy electron accelerator in the energy range of 60 to 140 GeV. The electron beam will be accelerated and stored in a LEP like storage ring in the LHC tunnel. In this paper we present the layout of the interaction region which has to deliver at the same time well matched beam optics and an efficient separation of the electron and proton beams. In general the large momentum difference of the two colliding beams provides a very elegant way to solve this problem: A focusing scheme that leads to the required beam sizes of the electrons and protons is combined with an early but gentle beam separation to avoid parasitic beam encounters and still keep the synchrotron radiation level in the IR within reasonable limits. We present in this paper two versions of this concept: A high luminosity layout where the mini beta magnets are embedded into the detector design as well as an IR design that is optimised for maximum acceptance of the particle detector.