ICFA announces a new phase towards preparation for the International Linear Collider

At its 86th meeting held on 2nd August, the International Committee for Future Accelerators (ICFA) approved the formation of the International Linear Collider (ILC) International Development Team as the first step towards the preparatory phase of the ILC project, with a mandate to make preparations for the ILC Pre-Lab in Japan.

In its Statement on February 22nd 2020, ICFA stated that”ICFA advocates establishment of an international development team to facilitate transition into the preparatory phase”for the construction of the ILC in Japan and asked the Linear Collider Board (LCB) to work out a proposal for the transition team.

Following the proposal by LCB, as the first step towards the preparatory phase of the ILC project, ICFA established the ILC International Development Team. This document elaborates the terms of reference of the Team. The Team replaced the LCB/LCC organization, whose mandate ended on June 30th 2020.

The Team will commence its work immediately and is expected to complete it by the end of 2021. The ILC International Development Team will work towards making a timely realization of the ILC possible.

Full text of announcement

Terminology

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.

SOURCE: International Committee for Future Accelerators