At its 90th meeting held on 29th and 30th March, the International Committee for Future Accelerators (ICFA) issued the statement regarding Higgs Factory development and the ILC.
ICFA reconfirms the international consensus on the importance of a Higgs Factory as the highest priority for realizing the scientific goals of particle physics, and reaffirms that the concept for the ILC is technically robust and has reached a level of maturity which supports its moving forward with the engineering design study.
KEK will continue to make efforts toward the realization of the ILC.
ICFA Statement Regarding Higgs Factory Development and the ILC
The International Committee for Future Accelerators (ICFA) recently met to review global progress and plans in high-energy physics. ICFA reconfirms the international consensus on the importance of a Higgs Factory as the highest priority for realizing the scientific goals of particle physics. This view has only strengthened over time based on results from the world’s particle physics facilities. Various design studies based on different technologies are in progress, including both circular colliders (FCC-ee and CEPC) and linear colliders (ILC and CLIC). ICFA follows with great attention the development of Higgs Factory proposals worldwide and recognizes the importance of advancing such concepts.
ICFA also reaffirms the importance of the regional planning activities that have recently been completed and those underway, which for decades have underpinned the global strategy for the field. Indeed, following the 2020 update to the European Strategy for Particle Physics, Europe is now undertaking a feasibility study for FCC. ICFA eagerly awaits the results of ongoing strategic planning activities in the U.S., China and elsewhere.
Concerning the International Linear Collider (ILC), ICFA reaffirms its position that the concept for the ILC is technically robust and has reached a level of maturity which supports its moving forward with the engineering design study toward its timely realization. Indeed, recent accelerator projects across the globe confirm the readiness of the foundational superconducting accelerator technology.
ICFA commits to continuing efforts within the International Development Team (IDT) over the next year to coordinate the global research community’s activities toward further developing and realizing the ILC in Japan. In particular, the IDT will work to further strengthen international collaboration among institutes and laboratories, and to expand the broad support from various stakeholders. ICFA will monitor developments over the next year to assess availability of resources and progress in international discussions.
ICFA continues to encourage inter-governmental discussion between Japan and potential partner nations to advance international collaboration toward important research and development activities as well as coordination toward realization of an ILC.
April 10, 2022
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
Consisting of two linear accelerators that face each other, the International Linear Collider 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, discovered at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in 2012, to be measured precisely. It could also shed light on new areas of physics such as dark matter. The ILC International Development Team (IDT) brings together the scientists and engineers around the world to coordinating the global research community’s activities toward f realizing the ILC in Japan.
SOURCE:
International Committee for Future Accelerators
CONTENT:
Press Release
DATE ISSUED:
April Xth, 2022
MEDIA CONTACT:
Linear Collider Communicators, communicators@linearcollider.org
Rika Takahashi, KEK, +81 29 879 6291, rika.takahashi@kek.jp