  We present a new symmetry-based concept for an achromatic low-beta collider
interaction region design. A specially-designed symmetric Chromaticity
Compensation Block (CCB) induces an angle spread in the passing beam such that
it cancels the chromatic kick of the final focusing quadrupoles. Two such CCBs
placed symmetrically around an interaction point allow simultaneous
compensation of the 1st-order chromaticities and chromatic beam smear at the IP
without inducing significant 2nd-order aberrations to the particle trajectory.
We first develop an analytic description of this approach and explicitly
formulate 2nd-order aberration compensation conditions at the interaction
point. The concept is next applied to develop an interaction region design for
the ion collider ring of an electron-ion collider. We numerically evaluate
performance of the design in terms of momentum acceptance and dynamic aperture.
The advantages of the new concept are illustrated by comparing it to the
conventional distributed-sextupole chromaticity compensation scheme.
