Barry Barish | 3 February 2011The 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: PAC, Project Advisory Committee, review
Barry Barish | 20 January 2011The 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: 2010, GDE, Global Design Effort, overview
Barry Barish | 13 January 2011Happy 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: B factory, B physics, electron-positron collider, INFN, Italy, Super B
Barry Barish | 16 December 2010Today, 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: baseline configuration, DRFS, ILC baseline, KCS, main linac tunnel, single tunnel
Barry Barish | 9 December 2010Today, 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: cavity gradient, CM1, gradient, ILC baseline, main linac, operating gradient
