Atsuto Suzuki Director General

2007.10.03
KEK faces new phases

I have spent 1.5 years in office since April of last year, which has allowed me to experience all the events that happen in one cycle of a fiscal year. On this occasion, I have decided to open a "DG's Corner" on the KEK web site to transmit my thoughts on various issues that KEK will encounter in the future.

The research projects at KEK are now evolving into new phases. For example, the first proton beam at J-PARC is expected to be delivered to the Materials and Life Science Experimental Facility in 2008, and the first 30 GeV proton beam and neutrino beam will be available in 2009 as well. On the other hand, KEKB will achieve a milestone in its integrated luminosity, 1 ab^-1, by the end of JFY 2008. This requires us to decide on the following program. The community of light source users has proposed development of a 5 GeV Energy Recovery Linac (ERL) as a next generation light source. In their proposal, they request carrying out a gradual development program starting with a compact ERL with an energy in the 60-200 MeV range. The activities for the International Linear Collider (ILC) are moving from the reference design to the Engineering Design Report (EDR) phase; sizable resources are required to conduct a detailed engineering design in a timely manner. At CERN, on the other hand, LHC experiments are expected to start in 2008. KEK also has a strong commitment to these experiments from which very exciting scientific results are anticipated shortly.

Considering all these developments, we are now at a moment to clearly define KEK's future plan. The roadmap of the lab will be established soon, and will be presented to the relevant scientific communities. We also emphasize that the budgetary strategy has to be firmly established and that the management structure has to be reinforced.

In the next issue of the DG's corner I will describe the roadmap for KEK's future projects.