With the future in mind, Japan’s High Energy Accelerator Research Organisation, KEK has made a change to its organisational structure regarding the ILC project. By doing so, KEK is getting ready for the “green light” from Japanese government. “The main purpose of this change is to make the functions and roles clearer,” said Masanori Yamauchi, […]
Driving cooperation projects forward
The 38th US-Japan HEP meeting
On 4 and 5 April last week, during the peak of the cherry blossoms in Japan, I attended the 38th US-Japan Joint Committee for High Energy Physics meeting at the KEK laboratory in Tsukuba, Japan as part of the US delegation. These metings happen annually and the location alternates between Japan and the US. The […]
More time for collaboration
DESY and KEK are two labs that have a lot in common. They know a lot about accelerators, operated and have operated a number of them in their long and eventful histories. They are their countries’ hubs for particle physics research, but they also run accelerators for photon science. They are national labs that collaborate […]
Directors from major particle physics labs meet Japanese journalists
On 26 February, members of the International Committee for Future Accelerators (ICFA) gathered in a conference room in Tokyo, Japan, for the press conference. Joachim Mnich, Research Director at DESY and the current chair of ICFA, Nigel Lockyer, Director of Fermilab, U.S., Fabiola Gianotti, Director-General of CERN, and Masanori Yamauchi, Director-General of KEK sat at […]
KEK’s science comic features the ILC
Japan’s KEK laboratory has featured a series of a science comic called “Kasoku Kids” on its website since December 2008. This public relation tool has proven to work quite effectively to make new particle physics fans, especially very young children. KEK staff met some of real-life Kasoku Kids at the open house: They had memorised […]
KEK issues action plan for the International Linear Collider
Japan’s KEK laboratory took a step forward to realise the International Linear Collider on 6 January, issuing a “KEK-ILC Action Plan”. This plan blueprints how KEK should start its preparation towards the ILC when the Japanese government gives its green light for the project. “Green Light” in this document is defined as a formal announcement […]
High-precision vertexing: from concept to reality
Back in the early days of the new millennium when TESLA was not linked to electrically driven vehicles but the name of an ILC predecessor project, a small group of physicist and engineers from Bonn and Munich came together to discuss what they can do to face the challenges in future high-energy physics experiments. The […]
Back in the beam
After nearly a year of campaign and some 10 weeks of data taking in various beams at CERN and at DESY, the detector layers, absorbers, support structures and electronics of several calorimeter prototypes for a future ILC detector are back in crates and on their way to DESY and other labs in Germany, Japan and the […]
Here’s one we made earlier
In a large surface building around the corner from the LHC experiment LHCb at CERN, a group of around 100 researchers is hoping to detect dark matter particles by pointing a superconducting magnet at the sun. The CAST project’s magnet – a former test magnet from the LHC – is equipped with an X-ray telescope […]
Open House at KEK this weekend
Japan’s particle physics research centre KEK will have its Open House on 6 September. Two ILC test facilities, ATF and STF, will have guided tours. Check out the informative and fun exhibits at the Kenkyu-honkan building, meet the Higgs particle in person. Everybody who visited and collect stamps of two ILC related facilities and an exhibit […]