The International Linear Collider

Greetings all. Monday saw a rare absence of work by myself on SLAC Today, but today a story was run that highlights future paramedic coverage at SLAC's fire station. The article itself was pretty easy and straightforward to write, but not terribly interesting. But it did get me out of the office to take a picture of a fire crew at the station, which was fun, because they're good people.

Today's topic deals with Fermilab, located in Batavia, Illinois, about a half hour west of Chicago. Fermilab is one of the world's premier particle physics laboratories. Many ground-breaking experiments have taken place here, and it is home of the current highest energy particle collider in the world.

On a side note, its also a beautiful setting. The grounds are a protected haven for tons of wildlife, including buffalo. The main building is a site to see in itself, as it was designed by someone with rather unique tastes.

But with the Tevatron (the powerful particle accelerator) scheduled to shut down in a couple of years when the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva begins experiments, Fermilab is looking toward the future. And the most ambitious vision of the future is the International Linear Collider (ILC).

Assuming the LHC creates as many results as most physicists expect, the ILC is the next logical step. Though it would collide particles at only 1/28 the energy of the LHC, it would be extremely useful.

Why, you ask?

The LHC will be smashing protons together. Protons are made of quarks and gluons. When they collide, different particles smash together, some annihilate, and some may not. The resulting event is a mess of ricocheting particles as well as newly created mass. The collisions are complex and sometimes unpredictable.

The ILC, on the other hand, would collide electrons and positrons. These are fundamental particles that are not made up of anything else (that we know of). Their collisions would be simpler, cleaner, and easier to observe. So even though the particles would technically have a fraction of the energy as LHC particles, all of that energy would be focused into just one particle and one collision. Technically, each proton at the LHC is made of 6 smaller particles which would divvy up the energy.

The ILC is a long way off and its fate rests in the hands of many different factors. And even if approved, Fermilab would have to win the bid to host the machine. So they are cautiously planning on experiments and projects that would help them win such a bid, but would also prove valuable in themselves if the ILC never comes to fruition.

But it would be nice to bring the frontier of particle physics back to the United States.