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Author archive: Barry Barish

About Barry Barish

Barry Barish is the winner of the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics. He is Distinguished Professor at the University of California, Riverside and Linde Professor, Emeritus at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). From 2005 to 2013 he was Director of the Global Design Effort and, apart from leading the collaboration to the publication of the ILC's Technical Design Report, contributed more than 300 Director's Corners in the ILC Newsline.

A conversation about our future

| 10 February 2011 What is the ILC future programme beyond the Technical Design Report? How does the ILC project move forward if the decision on a linear collider construction project is delayed a few years? These questions and many others were addressed during the last Funding Agencies for Large Colliders meeting held on 22 January at SLAC, US. Category: Director's Corner | Tagged: , , ,

Taking heed of good advice

| 3 February 2011 The most obvious benefit of the seemingly endless series of reviews we undergo comes from the rigours of doing our preparations. But the reviews also serve to validate our work, and perhaps most importantly, the review committees give us good advice in their reports. Last autumn, we had a two-day technical review of the Global Design Effort by the Project Advisory Committee (PAC), a subcommittee of the International Linear Collider Steering Committee (ILCSC). Several recommendations came out of that PAC review that have been quite helpful to us as we prepare to make final decisions on the proposed new baseline configuration for the ILC Technical Design Report (TDR). Category: Director's Corner | Tagged: , ,

What did we accomplish last year?

| 20 January 2011 The ILC is still very much a dream and the path to a real project remains highly uncertain, even though the scientific case is as strong as ever and we continue to meet all our highest priority goals. Hopefully, the world political and economic climate will improve before too long and there will once again be receptiveness to major investments in large-scale basic science projects. It is hard to imagine that we have seen the last of such projects; therefore our strategy is to be as prepared as possible to make a strong proposal for a linear collider when the time is right. Keeping that ultimate goal in mind, how are we doing and what did we accomplish in 2010? In fact, in my opinion, last year was a banner year for the Global Design Effort! Category: Director's Corner | Tagged: , , ,

Investing in particle physics

| 13 January 2011 Happy New Year! This is my first column of 2011 and I am very pleased to begin the year by reporting on the significant new investment in particle physics by the Italian government. The Italian Ministry for Education, University and Research has announced the funding of the proposed €400-million Super B project of the Italian National Institute of Nuclear Physics (INFN). The present plan is to site the machine at or near the Frascati Laboratory and to reuse magnets and other apparatuses from the PEP-II accelerator and the BABAR detector at SLAC in the US, both keeping costs down and enabling a rapid construction schedule, perhaps as short as five years. Category: Director's Corner | Tagged: , , , , ,

Evolving the ILC baseline: single main linac tunnel

| 16 December 2010 Today, I describe the second of the proposed change actions, which has been stated as follows: "We propose to change the main linac tunnel configuration to one with only a single, accelerator-enclosure tunnel, thereby eliminating the support equipment tunnel proposed in the Reference Design. We propose to develop and include in the baseline two novel High-Level RF power source and distribution schemes ("KCS" and "DRFS") that are better suited to a single-tunnel solution than the scheme proposed in the RDR. A fall-back to the RDR HLRF Technology can be adopted should the R&D on KCS or DRFS not be considered successful." Category: Director's Corner | Tagged: , , , , ,

Evolving the ILC baseline: main linac operating gradient

| 9 December 2010 Today, I will describe the first of those proposed change actions completed in recent weeks. [...] The proposal that I have approved sets the average operating gradient of 31.5 MV/m for operation of the main linac cryomodules, with a spread of up to 20 percent. We believe these parameters are realistic and achievable, but represent challenging goals. Category: Director's Corner | Tagged: , , , , ,

Evolving the ILC baseline

| 2 December 2010 I have officially approved two major changes in the ILC baseline configuration for the next phase of our R&D and design work. [...] Today, I discuss the procedure we have followed to evaluate and decide on these changes. Category: Director's Corner | Tagged: , ,

Linear Collider Accelerator School

| 18 November 2010 Our fifth Linear Collider Accelerator School, and the first one sponsored jointly by ILC and CLIC, was held there from 25 October to 5 November 2010. Category: Director's Corner | Tagged: , ,

Electron-Cloud physics

| 11 November 2010 [...] For the ILC, electron cloud effects can defocus the positron beam in the damping rings, thereby degrading the ability to create a low-emittance beam, a key in creating the required very small final beam spot. Category: Director's Corner | Tagged: , ,

Cavity gradient milestone achieved

| 4 November 2010 One of our most visible and important ILC R&D short-term milestones has been to demonstrate production of ILC superconducting radio frequency cavities with gradient of greater than or equal to 35 megavolts per metre (MV/m) and Q0 = 8x10^9 and 50 percent production yield. [...] Today I announce the successful achievement of that important 2010 milestone. Category: Director's Corner | Tagged: , ,