The International Committee for Future Accelerators (ICFA) issued a statement to support the construction of the International Linear Collider (ILC) operating at 250 giga electron volts (GeV) ICFA also stated its continuing support for the ILC and its encouragement of the collider’s timely realisation as an international project led by Japanese initiative.
Professor Geoffrey Taylor, ICFA Chair said "In just 5 years since its discovery, the world's particle physicists are ready to build a Higgs factory"
The statement was issued at the 12th ICFA seminar held in Ottawa, Canada from 6 to 9 November 2017.
“It is great to see so much congruency among all major particle physics players in the world,” said Joachim Mnich, Director of Particle Physics and Astroparticle Physics at DESY, Germany, and current chair of ICFA. “Particle physics has produced major discoveries that have attracted the attention of people around the globe like the Higgs particle. The next steps will be even more global as we further explore open fundamental questions using more powerful accelerators. The world’s scientists are coming together to chart this exciting future.”
The full text of the ICFA statement (issued 8 November 2017):
ICFA Statement on the ILC Operating at 250 GeV as a Higgs Boson Factory
The discovery of a Higgs boson in 2012 at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN is one of the most significant recent breakthroughs in science and marks a major step forward in fundamental physics. Precision studies of the Higgs boson will further deepen our understanding of the most fundamental laws of matter and its interactions.
The International Linear Collider (ILC) operating at 250 GeV center-of-mass energy will provide excellent science from precision studies of the Higgs boson. Therefore, ICFA considers the ILC a key science project complementary to the LHC and its upgrade.
ICFA welcomes the efforts by the Linear Collider Collaboration on cost reductions for the ILC, which indicate that up to 40% cost reduction relative to the 2013 Technical Design Report (500 GeV ILC) is possible for a 250 GeV collider.
ICFA emphasises the extendibility of the ILC to higher energies and notes that there is large discovery potential with important additional measurements accessible at energies beyond 250 GeV.
ICFA thus supports the conclusions of the Linear Collider Board (LCB) in their report presented at this meeting and very strongly encourages Japan to realise the ILC in a timely fashion as a Higgs boson factory with a center-of-mass energy of 250 GeV as an international project1, led by Japanese initiative.
1 In the LCB report the European XFEL and FAIR are mentioned as recent examples for international projects.
“This is a very positive step for the future of physics and one we can expect a lot sooner than expected.” Says CoEPP Director and IFCA Board Member, Prof Geoffrey Taylor.
Ottawa, November 2017
About ICFA
ICFA, the International Committee for Future Accelerators, was created to facilitate international collaboration in the 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 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 ILC’s 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 on 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 by 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.
http://www.linearcollider.org/ILC
Contacts:
Linear Collider Communicators (communicators@linearcollider.org):
Perrine Royole-Degieux, CNRS/IN2P3, France +33 4 73 40 54 59, royole@in2p3.fr
Rika Takahashi, KEK, Japan, +81 29 979 6292, rika.takahashi@kek.jp
Barbara Warmbein, DESY, Germany, +49 40 8998 1847, barbara.warmbein@desy.de
KEK Press Office, KEK, Japan, press@kek.jp
Caroline Hamilton
Senior Communications and Outreach Consultant
CoEPP
+61 478 402 765
caroline.hamilton@coepp.org.au (link sends e-mail)