Director’s Corner 19 October 2006 Barry Barish Road to the ILC Reference Design The next big goal for the Global Design Effort is to produce an ILC Reference Design Report (RDR) that will include Preliminary Costing. We are systematically working toward this goal, and have now progressed far enough to set a realistic schedule. In […]
Pomp and Circumstance
Director’s Corner 12 October 2006 Barry Barish Pomp and Circumstance Last week, Sheldon Glashow of Boston University and I made a trip to Italy to receive honorary degrees in physics ("Lauree ad Honorem in Fisica") from the University of Bologna. The ceremony was very impressive, not just for the elegant caps and gowns we wore, […]
The Evolving ILC Design: Eliminating One Positron Damping Ring
Director’s Corner 5 October 2006 Barry Barish The Evolving ILC Design: Eliminating One Positron Damping Ring We have planned from the beginning to quickly create an initial baseline and as a result of technical developments, evolve it in time. Our Baseline Configuration Document explicitly includes a number of alternatives that we consider to be very […]
Machine Advisory Committee Reviews the GDE
Director’s Corner 28 September 2006 Barry Barish Machine Advisory Committee Reviews the GDE The Machine Advisory Committee (MAC) reviewed the GDE for the second time last week at KEK in Japan from 20 to 22 September. The MAC, appointed by the International Linear Collider Steering Committee, is made up of an experienced international group of […]
The Evolving ILC Design: Changing the Crossing Angles
Director’s Corner 21 September 2006 Barry Barish The Evolving ILC Design: Changing the Crossing Angles Optimising cost to performance for the ILC design is a challenging task. Our working groups have identified a number of possible design changes, motivated by large potential cost savings. Changing the crossing angles for the final focus interaction regions is […]
Developing an International Cost Estimate for the ILC
Director’s Corner 7 September 2006 Barry Barish Developing an International Cost Estimate for the ILC Our GDE team has about a third of its membership from the Americas, a third from Asia and a third from Europe. This "global" team developed a baseline configuration document (BCD) that lays out the technical description of the ILC, […]
Why Cost Confidentiality
Director’s Corner 31 August 2006 Barry Barish Why Cost Confidentiality? A central focus of the GDE at this time is determining the ILC cost in its present form. Over the next few months we will be doing selected studies to optimise the cost to performance. We have identified and are studying potential design changes, which […]
Revisiting the ILC Parameters
Director’s Corner 24 August 2006 Barry Barish Revisiting the ILC Parameters An innocent looking little document entitled "Parameters for the Linear Collider" dated 30 September 2003 has to a large extent determined the present baseline design of the ILC. We have used this document as if it were "a requirements document," and the baseline design […]
Happy Birthday GDE
Director’s Corner 17 August 2006 Barry Barish Happy Birthday GDE One year ago, most of the 49 newly appointed members of the Global Design Effort came to Snowmass, Colorado, for the International Linear Collider Workshop where they participated in our first GDE face-to-face meeting. On 16 August 2005, the GDE members trudged up the hill […]
More Reflections on VLCW06: The ILC Reference Design
Director’s Corner 10 August 2006 Barry Barish More Reflections on VLCW06: The ILC Reference Design Last week I discussed the physics and detector part of the joint American Linear Collider Planning Group (ALCPG) and GDE workshop (VLCW06) held in Vancouver from 19-23 July. The GDE portion of the meeting focused on preparations for the Reference […]