ICFA briefs on future prospect for the International Linear Collider

Tokyo, Japan - On 7 March 2019, the International Committee for Future Accelerators (ICFA) will host a press conference about future prospects of the International Linear Collider (ILC) project, a planned particle accelerator to complement results from CERNʼs Large Hadron Collider LHC.

ICFA, an international body that facilitates international collaboration in the construction and use of particle accelerators for high-energy physics, expects to receive the Japanese governmentʼs point of view on the ILC at its 83rd meeting to be held at the University of Tokyo.

Geoffrey Taylor, ICFA Chair, and Tatsuya Nakada, Chair of Linear Collider Board (LCB), will hold a briefing in response to the result of the meeting with government representatives. Masanori Yamauchi, Director General of KEK laboratory, Japan will moderate the conference.

Japanese-English simultaneous interpreting will be provided, and video streaming is available for media not on site but wishing to participate.

Media representatives wishing to attend the press conference, please send your name, affiliation, contact information (telephone, e-mail address), and venue to attend (Tokyo or video) to press@kek.jp by Tuesday, 5 March.

Who:  
Geoffrey Taylor, ICFA Chair, Director of CoEPP, Australia, and Professor at the University of Melbourne 
Tatsuya Nakada, LCB Chair, Professor at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland 
Masanori Yamauchi, Director General, KEK. Japan 
 
When:

Thursday, 7 March, 2019, 5:45 pm ‒ 6:45 pm JST 
 
Where:

Sanjo Conference Hall, The University of Tokyo 
7-3-1. Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-8654  

Map

About ICFA

ICFA, the International Committee for Future Accelerators, was created to facilitate international collaboration in the planning, construction and use of accelerators for high energy physics. The Committee has 16 members, selected primarily from the regions most deeply involved in high-energy physics. 

About the ILC

The Linear Collider Collaboration (LCC) is an international endeavour that brings together about 2400 scientists and engineers from more than 300 universities and laboratories in 49 countries and regions. Consisting of two linear accelerators that face each other, the ILC will accelerate and collide electrons and their anti-particles, positrons. Superconducting radiofrequency accelerator cavities operating at temperatures near absolute zero give the particles more and more energy until they collide in the detectors at the centre of the machine. At the height of operation, bunches of electrons and positrons will collide roughly 7,000 times per second at a total collision energy of 250 GeV, creating a surge of new particles that are tracked and registered in the ILCʼs detectors. Each bunch will contain 20 billion electrons or positrons concentrated into an area much smaller than that of a human hair.

This means a very high rate of collisions. This high “luminosity”, when combined with the very precise interaction of two point-like colliding particles that annihilate each other, will allow the ILC to deliver a wealth of data to scientists that will allow the properties of particles, such as the Higgs boson, recently discovered at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, to be measured precisely. It could also shed light on new areas of physics such as dark matter.

The ILC had originally been designed with a collision energy of 500 GeV. The new version of the collider makes it less costly and faster to realise. The research and development work that is being done for accelerators and detectors around the world and to take the linear collider project to the next step is coordinated in the framework of the Linear Collider Collaboration headed by former LHC Project Manager Lyn Evans. The Linear Collider Board (LCB), representing ICFA, will provide oversight to the LCC, chaired by Tatsuya Nakada, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland. 

About the European Strategy for Particle Physics

Approximately every seven years the European particle physics community updates the priorities and strategy of the field. Launched by the CERN Council in October 2018, the current Update of European Strategy for Particle Physics is a two-year process in which the community expresses its views on the current status and future direction of particle physics in Europe. Input has been collected and will be presented and discussed at an Open Symposium. The input will be summarised in a Physics Briefing book. An updated strategy will be drafted by the Strategy Group, which consists mainly of the delegates of the CERN member states, and submitted to the CERN Council, for adoption, in a special session planned to take place in May 2020. This process is led by the European particle physics community but with strong worldwide participation of scientists.  The input from Japan on the plans for the International Linear Collider will constitute an important element of the discussions that are expected at the Open Symposium.

Contacts:

KEK Press Office
KEK, Japan
press@kek.jp

Linear Collider Communicators 
communicators@linearcollider.org

Perrine Royole-Degieux
CNRS/IN2P3
France +33 4 73 40 54 59
royole@in2p3.fr 

Barbara Warmbein,
DESY Germany, +49 40 8998 1847
barbara.warmbein@desy.de