Interactions News Wire #67-04
16 November 2004 http://www.interactions.org
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Source: ILCSC
Content: Press Release
Date Issued: 16 November 2004
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KEK Workshop - Toward an International Design of a Linear Collider

Over 200 physicists and engineers from Asia, Europe and the Americas met in the KEK High Energy Accelerator Research Organization in Tsukuba, Japan from November 13th-15th 2004 to enthusiastically explore the path toward rapid development of a conceptual design of an International Linear Collider.

“KEK has been delighted to host this important workshop,” KEK's Director General Yoji Totsuka said.  “For the first time the world’s linear collider community is working together to start discussions on a final design for the ILC. We have provided opportunities for accelerator experts from various regions, who may have previously been working on different projects, to get to know each other and start the important process of creating a unified team.”

The International Linear Collider is a proposed future international particle accelerator. It would create high-energy particle collisions between electrons and positrons, their antimatter counterparts. The proposed collider would occupy a tunnel up to 40 km long with the experimental areas located at the midpoint, where the electrons and positrons collide. The ILC would provide a tool for scientists to address many of the most compelling questions of the 21st century about dark matter, extra dimensions and the fundamental nature of matter, energy, space and time. From its inception, the ILC would be designed, funded, managed and operated as an international scientific project.

Scientists from throughout the worldwide particle physics community have endorsed an electron-positron linear collider as the next high-energy particle accelerator. In 2007, operations will begin at the Large Hadron Collider, now under construction at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, in Geneva, Switzerland. The LHC, a circular proton-proton synchrotron, will operate at the highest energies any particle accelerator has ever achieved. Complementary to the LHC, physicists say, the ILC will be able to address the 21st-century agenda of compelling physics questions.

“Last August, the international particle physics community made a difficult but necessary decision in choosing superconducting-technology for the accelerating system of the ILC,” said Cornell University’s Maury Tigner, chair of the International Linear Collider Steering Committee. “The decision opened the way for the world particle physics community to concentrate its combined resources behind one technology. There is a long way to go and much hard work needed before the final design of the ILC is established. However, the first steps on a journey can sometimes be the hardest. The success of the KEK ILC workshop has set us off in the right direction.”

Working groups at  the meeting focused on many aspects of the future design of the accelerator including; the parameters of the main linear accelerators, the injector system, the beam delivery system, the design of the accelerating structures and how to effectively communicate both within the ILC community and to the public. 

Press contact:
Maury Tigner
Chair, ILCSC
Cornell University
mt52@cornell.edu

ILCSC website: http://www.fnal.gov/directorate/icfa/International_ILCSC.html