Newsline

Special issue: The ILC guide to Kitakami

How do foreigners get around in Japan? What are the problems they encounter and what are the experiences that they make? And what can be done to make lives easier for scientists from around the world who come to settle in Japan when (if) the ILC is being built and operated? The European LC communicators inspected the Kitakami ILC site while being filmed by Japanese communicator Rika Takahashi.

Around the World

The road to Kitakami

by Barbara Warmbein

Our mission was clear: we were the tasters, the vanguard. In early February, the two European LC communicators travelled to Japan for three days to a. find our way around the Japanese transport system, b. be filmed doing so, c. find entry points of improvement potential for foreigners about to make the same experience, and d. start a communication model for the future multi-national laboratory. Here is how it all played out.

Feature

The Big ILC Kitakami Iwate Tohoku Glossary

by Barbara Warmbein

Are you confused yet? Is Kitakami a mountain or a town, a river or a region? What’s “Iwate” and what does it have in common with Sendai? Here’s a glossary to help you understand all those new words and look them up before you go. Oh, and by the way: Kitakami is all of the above and Iwate and Sendai are all in the Tohoku region of Japan…

Feature

A day in the life of a particle physicist in Kitakami

by Perrine Royole-Degieux

The life of a particle physicist is the same everywhere in the world one might say. It’s true that the physicist’s work life at the future ILC is easily predictable. Computing and data taking or analysis, meeting with colleagues, tons of coffee and tea, short lunch breaks at the cafeteria (with “electron” and “positron” menus?), preparing for future meetings in the afternoon, plus, for the lucky ones, night shifts for a detector or machine survey. I’m not going to tell you anything new about what you know already. Let me tell you the other side of the story, regarding your afterwork life at the Kitakami site. Put on your most comfy easy-to-take-off shoes – there is much to visit here - and follow me to the Tohoku region.

Director's Corner

Future Colliders: A strategic perspective

by Harry Weerts

Over the past decades, colliders have defined the energy frontier in particle physics. Currently there are four studies worldwide: ILC, CLIC, FCC and a muon collider. Each high-energy physicist can argue about which one of these should be pursued and have his/her own preference. However, considering the strategic aspect and the time scale involved in realising these machines, the ILC is the natural next energy frontier machine. Harry Weerts, Americas Regional Director for the Linear Collider Collaboration, explains why.

Slideshow

Kitakami slideshow

Images: ILC/Barbara Warmbein, ILC/Perrine Royole-Degieux and Oshu City

We're ending this travel diary with a few of the hundreds of pictures we took during this trip to Tohoku. Have a glance, and discover what the region looks like, as if you were there.

In the News

  • from Futura Science
    14 February 2014

    ela explique aussi pourquoi parallèlement à la mise en service du LHC, des études ont été menées pour l’ILC. Un tel accélérateur permet de bien connaître les propriétés physiques du boson de BEH, notamment les couplages de Yukawa. Si l’on découvrait malgré tout des particules supersymétriques à partir de 2015, avec le redémarrage du LHC, l’ILC pourrait là aussi permettre de mesurer précisément bien des propriétés de ces particules.

  • from Kahku Shinpo
    12 February 2014

    岩手県一関市は12日、2014年度当初予算案を発表した。「国際リニアコライダー(ILC)」の建設実現を見据え、関連産業への地元企業の参入促進を図る科学技術アドバイザーの設置事業を盛り込んだ。(Ichinoseki city announced city’s budget plan for fiscal year 2014 on 12 February. It includes the new project to staff the science technology advisers to encourage the local industries to enter into the accelerator business, to take advantage of the prospective of the ILC to be build in the area)

  • from Der Tagesspiegel
    11 February 2014

    Das Vorhaben namens ILC (International Linear Collider), bisher vom Cern unterstützt, bekommt jetzt mächtig Konkurrenz. Denn die FCC-Verfechter haben noch einen Trumpf: Um Entwicklungszeit zu gewinnen, schlagen sie vor, dass der künftige Beschleunigerring zunächst für einige Jahre mit Elektronen und Positronen beschickt wird, berichtet der Cern-Physiker Jörg Wenninger. „Das kommt dem Forschungsansatz des ILC schon sehr nahe.“ Es liege auf der Hand, dass nicht zwei Großgeräte gebaut werden, die dann ähnliche Fragen bearbeiten, meint er. Insofern setzt das erweiterte FCC-Konzept das ohnehin schon stockende Unternehmen ILC weiter unter Druck.

  • from livescience.com
    11 Feburary 2014

    Another suggestion for a next high-energy particle collider is to build a linear machine, provisionally titled the International Linear Collider (ILC). It is not yet clear where it would be housed, but some researchers in Japan have proposed to build it there. Instead of moving particles in a circle, the machine would be a straight accelerator some 19 miles (31 km) long. It would no longer be colliding protons but instead lighter-mass particles — electrons and their antimatter partners called positrons — sent from either end of the tunnel.

  • from Le Monde
    10 February 2014

    Il existe un tel projet au Japon, baptisé International Linear Collider (ILC), et un autre au CERN, le Collisionneur linéaire compact (CLIC), d’une technologie un peu différente. Ne pouvant jouer sur tous les tableaux, l’Europe se verrait bien soutenir l’initiative du Japon si celui-ci, qui voit là une possibilité de relance après l’accident de Fukushima, se décide. Mais pour étudier cette physique inédite dont rêvent les savants, il faudra bien davantage…

  • from ANA-MPA
    8 February 2014

    O σχεδιαζόμενος γιγάντιος FCC έχει όμως να ανταγωνιστεί μια πιο «ώριμη» και φθηνότερη εναλλακτική πρόταση για τη δημιουργία ενός γραμμικού -όχι κυκλικού- επιταχυντή, είτε του Compact Linear Collider (CLIC) μήκους 80 χλμ., είτε του International Linear Collider (ILC) μήκους 31 χλμ. Το μεγάλο δίλημμα είναι αν ο επόμενος μεγάλος επιταχυντής θα είναι κυκλικός ή γραμμικός και, στη συνέχεια, αφού αποφασιστεί αυτό, θα πρέπει να οριστικοποιηθεί το ακριβές σχέδιο του επιταχυντή. Οι δύο μελέτες σκοπιμότητας θα συγκρίνουν κόστη και οφέλη για τον κυκλικό και τον γραμμικό επιταχυντή.

  • from physicsworld.com
    6 February 2014

    One leading design effort is the International Linear Collider (ILC), which would accelerate electrons and positrons to about 250 GeV and smash them together at a rate of five times per second. Funding for the $8bn, 31 km-long collider has yet to be found, but Japanese particle physicists are already making moves to host this next-generation particle smasher.

  • from Science
    6 February 2014

    The plan would offer an alternative to the current widely held vision for the global future of particle physics, in which the next great collider would be an arrow-straight linear collider, not a circular one. “We have to make a choice at some point,” says Patrick Janot, a physicist at CERN, located near Geneva, Switzerland. “Either we have to go linear or we have to go circular.”

  • from i-mash.ru
    6 February 2014

    Одним из “наследников” БАКа станет Международный линейный коллайдер ILC, который планируется построить в Японии. Параллельно с этим проектом обсуждается план создания линейного коллайдера CLIC (Compact Linear Collider).

  • from CERN
    6 February 2014

    The FCC will thus run in parallel with another study that has already been under way for a number of years, the Compact Linear Collider, or “CLIC”, another option for a future accelerator at CERN. The aim of the CLIC study is to investigate the potential of a linear collider based on a novel accelerating technology.

  • from FNN Local News
    4 February 2014

    ILC(国際リニアコライダー)の広報活動をしているヨーロッパと日本の担当者が、北­上山地の建設候補地を視察した。