[News-releases] Colliders Colliding: New Organization to Advance Next-Generation Project

[Tim Meyer]

Press Release | For Immediate Release | 21 February 2013, 4:00pm PST 

COLLIDERS COLLIDING: ILC and CLIC unite in the Linear Collider
Collaboration, a new global organisation to advance the global development
work for next-generation particle collider

Vancouver, 21 February 2013. The two most mature future particle physics
projects, the International Linear Collider (ILC) and the Compact Linear
Collider study (CLIC), have formed an official organisational partnership
today. As the newly founded Linear Collider Collaboration, they will
coordinate and advance the global development work for the linear collider,
a global project to complement the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN and
ultimately understand the deepest secrets of the universe. The Linear
Collider Collaboration is headed by Lyn Evans, former Project Manager of
CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC).  Hitoshi Murayama, Director of the Kavli
Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe, will serve as a
deputy director.

The Linear Collider Board, headed by the University of Tokyo’s Sachio
Komamiya, is a new oversight committee for the Linear Collider Collaboration
that will take office at the same time. The oversight board was appointed by
the International Committee for Future Accelerators (ICFA), which is
currently chaired by Pier Oddone, Director of Fermilab, US.

“It is my great pleasure to see the worldwide efforts to design and build
the next-generation linear collider take their next step. I look forward to
working with Lyn and his team,” said ICFA chair Pier Oddone.

“Now that the LHC has delivered its first and exciting discovery I am eager
to help the next project on its way,” said Linear Collider Director Lyn
Evans. “I am an accelerator builder, and with the strong support the ILC
receives from Japan, the LCC may be getting the tunneling machines out soon
for a Higgs factory in Japan while at the same time pushing frontiers in
CLIC technology.”

“The two projects, ILC and CLIC, have similar goals, but use very different
technologies and are at different stages of maturity. I look forward to
seeing progress in both projects as chair of the Linear Collider Board,”
said Sachio Komamiya. 

The Linear Collider Collaboration has three main sections, reflecting the
three areas of research that will continue to be conducted. The
International Linear Collider section will be led by Mike Harrison
(Brookhaven National Lab, US), the Compact Linear Collider section will be
led by Steinar Stapnes (CERN), and the section for Physics and Detectors
will be led by Hitoshi Yamamoto (Tohoku University). For the ILC, which will
publish its Technical Design Report in June 2013, the main focus is on
preparing it for possible construction while at the same time further
advancing acceleration technologies and design optimisation. For CLIC,
research into the novel drive beam acceleration concept will continue to
proceed. For Physics and Detectors, research and development of novel
detector technologies and concepts will continue at full power, fully
exploiting the synergies that exist between ILC and CLIC detector
requirements. 

The ILC’s Global Design Effort and its supervisory organisation, the ILC
Steering committee, officially handed over their duty to LCC and LCB, but
they will continue to work together until the official completion of the
Technical Design Report for the ILC in June 2013.

The Linear Collider Board and new Directorate met for the first time on 21
February at Canada’s national laboratory for particle and nuclear physics
TRIUMF. The press conference will be webcast at
http://mediasitemob1.mediagroup.ubc.ca/Mediasite/Play/4927082a86c441c3bbf1ee
94611b0c131d . Journalists will have the opportunity to ask questions via
the online webcast using a standard web browser.

After the discovery of a new particle at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN,
the case for a linear collider has become even more compelling. The new
particle, which was found to have a mass of 126 GeV, needs to be studied in
great detail to precisely determine its properties and confirm (or not) that
it is the final missing piece of the Standard Model of Particle Physics, the
Higgs particle. The LHC will only be able to do these precision studies up
to a certain point, while a linear collider, with its ‘cleaner’ collisions
between electrons and their antiparticles, positrons, will be able to probe
deeply into the new particle, and a range of other phenomena that physics
still expect to be discovered at the LHC.

The International Linear Collider is currently the most advanced linear
collider project, both in terms of advanced and tested acceleration
technology as well as from an organisational point of view. Truly global
from the start with some 1000 people from around the world working on its
design, it can be built in stages – first, at half its design energy, as a
so-called Higgs factory for the precision studies of the new particle,
second, at its design energy of 500 GeV, and third, at double this energy,
which opens further possibilities for as yet undiscovered physics phenomena.
Japan is signaling interest to host the ILC.

ABOUT THE LINEAR COLLIDER COLLABORATION: 
The ILC and CLIC are potential next-generation particle colliders that would
complement the Large Hadron Collider LHC at CERN. The Linear Collider
Collaboration is the organisation that brings the two projects together to
coordinate the research and development work that is being done for
accelerators and detectors around the world. Although there is not yet a
clear signal to launch the construction of a linear collider, there is
consensus in the scientific community that the results from the LHC should
be complemented by a collider that can study the discoveries in greater
detail by producing different kinds of collisions.

Both projects will continue to exist and carry on their R&D activities, but
with even more synergy between areas common to both. These include the
detectors, the planning of the infrastructure, civil engineering aspects and
more. The projects are at different stages of maturity: while CLIC published
its Conceptual Design Report in 2012 and is scheduled to complete the
Technical Design Report, which demonstrates feasibility for construction, in
a couple of years, the ILC has completed the draft of its Technical Design
Report in 2012 and will, after a series of reviews, publish the final
version including a new figure for the projected cost, in June 2013. With
the finalisation of the Technical Design Report, the ILC’s design team, the
Global Design Effort or GDE, headed by Barry Barish, formally completes its
mandate, which is one of the reasons for the establishment of the new Linear
Collider Collaboration. 

CONTACT: 	
Linear Collider Communications team
communicators at linearcollider.org

Tim Meyer, Head of Strategic Planning & Communications at TRIUMF 
tmeyer at triumf.ca (or +1-604-222-7674)

Images and background information: 
www.linearcollider.org


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Timothy I. Meyer, Ph.D.
Head, Strategic Planning & Communications
TRIUMF -- Accelerating Science for Canada | 
    Un accélérateur de la démarche scientifique canadienne
4004 Wesbrook Mall | Vancouver, BC  V6T 2A3 | CANADA
Tel: 604.222.7674
Fax: 604.222.3791
Mobile (w/call fwd): 604.235.1925
E-mail: tmeyer at triumf.ca
WWW: http://www.triumf.ca
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