Participants’nationalities (click to enlarge) at the “ ECFA workshop 2005 on physics and detectors at the ILC" in Vienna

“What are these ECFA study meetings for? Once a year and during 3.5 days, a wide spectrum of topics is presented to the ECFA community. The workshop gives its members the opportunity to express their opinions about choices and to make suggestions. It is also a place for forums which encourage new ideas and enable young talents to express themselves", said Richard.

As with the previous meetings, the agenda for the 2005 meeting was mainly driven by R&D and phenomenology. In the future, the workshop agenda will include detector concepts and a connection with the GDE.

François Richard

This meeting was useful for developing awareness within the scientific community about the importance of the next year for the ILC. It also became evident that the evaluation of detectors and physics performances - which play a key role in preparing the Detector Concept Document and the Reference Design Document by the end of 2006 - require rapid progress in the development of advanced software tools. Scientists plan to have a dedicated workshop on this topic in April 2006.

At the meeting, 229 participants came from numerous countries (shown in the pie chart above), even outside Europe. The date for the next ECFA ILC meeting is currently under discussion. At the conclusion of the meeting, Richard said, “There is much more for us to do in close collaboration with the GDE".

--Perrine Royole-Degieux