Over the years, the linear collider input/output event data model has facilitated data sharing between the world’s linear collider detector groups
Leah Hesla | 8 December 2011
The data model that transformed the linear collider detector community from a computational Tower of Babel into a group that inputs with one voice has gotten an update. ILC software developers released LCIO 2.0 this autumn. The new version of LCIO, a particle event data model, includes features that help scientists cope with the increasingly […]
Under the umbrella of the PRC-US Cooperation on High Energy Physics, Jefferson Lab and IHEP exchange notes on cavity R&D
Leah Hesla | 17 November 2011
At a recent meeting between US and Chinese high-energy and nuclear physics laboratories, Jefferson Lab in Newport News, US, and the Institute for High Energy Physics (IHEP) in Beijing, China, renewed a partnership to collaborate on the development of superconducting accelerator cavities, including an ILC-type nine-cell cavity. It is a continuation of a collaboration that […]
Niowave in Lansing, US is bringing superconducting cavities to the larger science community
Leah Hesla | 3 November 2011
On the homepage of a US-based company website is a picture that, at first glance, looks like an advertisement for a major household appliance. A yellow starburst graphic assures you that delivery time is quick. A text-boxed baseline price is presented in glowing type. And at the centre is the touted item: an ILC/TESLA-type accelerator […]
The 1-TeV upgrade challenges scientists develop better beams at lower rates of power
Leah Hesla | 20 October 2011
The technical design of the International Linear Collider is nearing completion, and it comes with a stipulation: If the Large Hadron Collider should direct scientists to an energy range beyond what the ILC accommodates, they should refer to its 1-teraelectronvolt contingency plan. Over the next several months, researchers will complete a preliminary study of the […]
At CERN, gradually formed cooperation between CLIC and the ILC is the way to go
Leah Hesla | 13 October 2011
The forces behind the two most mature proposals for a next-generation collider, the International Linear Collider (ILC) and the Compact Linear Collider (CLIC) study, have been steadily coming together, with scientists from both communities sharing ideas and information across the technology divide. In at least nominal support of cooperation between the two, CERN in Switzerland, […]
The particle flow algorithm joins smart programming with the high granularity of next-generation particle detectors to measure energies with unprecedented resolution
Leah Hesla | 15 September 2011
The familiar image of a collision event in a particle detector is a beautiful mess: Gossamer lines shoot and spiral every which way from a common point, revealing the paths of the post-collision projectiles. Unfortunately for particle tagging, the tracks almost always end in knotty energy clusters, leading physicists down trails that stop abruptly, unresolved, […]
X-ray tomography gives subsurface view of accelerator cavities
Leah Hesla | 1 September 2011
The power of the CAT scan to find tumours or bone fractures has advanced medical science by bringing such ailments to X-ray light, foregoing the need to cut a body open for diagnosis. As particle accelerator research makes its own advances, scientists are exploiting the X-ray in similar ways. Researchers at the US Department of […]
Researchers at the University of Texas at Arlington spend two weeks characterising ILC detector chamber prototypes at Fermilab's Test Beam Facility.
Leah Hesla | 18 August 2011
Three researchers working on a detector for the ILC recently drove their components 1,500 kilometres from Arlington, Texas to Batavia, Illinois to get to know their detectors a bit better. For approximately two weeks, researchers from the University of Texas at Arlington (UTA) sent muon, proton and pion beams through their chamber prototypes at the […]
The Global Design Effort collaborates with industrial companies to encourage scientific innovation for ILC technology
Leah Hesla | 11 August 2011
As a global science project, the ILC draws on the resources of laboratories in the Americas, Asia and Europe. It also calls on capabilities from industrial factories and plants around the globe. The ILC Global Design Effort (GDE) has worked to encourage an open exchange of information and ideas among these diverse collaborators and industrial […]
Fermilab scientists turn their attention to individual cavities to improve beam stability
Leah Hesla | 4 August 2011
A constant acceleration gradient along many thousands of particle bunches provides for a particle beam’s sure-footed climb to higher energies, readying the beam for collision by providing the same acceleration for each bunch. But constant gradients don’t come naturally for accelerating cavities, the elements that pave the particles’ ascending path. A cavity has to be […]
