Artist’s impression of the future ILC. Image: Rey.Hori
The following statement was issued today by the International Committee for Future Accelerators, a 16-member body created in 1976 to facilitate international collaboration in the construction and use of accelerators for high energy physics. Fermilab Director Nigel Lockyer is a member and past chairperson of ICFA. ICFA’s full press release is available at Interactions.org.
ICFA statement on the ILC operating at 250 GeV as a Higgs boson factory
The discovery of a Higgs boson in 2012 at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN is one of the most significant recent breakthroughs in science and marks a major step forward in fundamental physics. Precision studies of the Higgs boson will further deepen our understanding of the most fundamental laws of matter and its interactions.
The International Linear Collider (ILC) operating at 250 GeV center-of-mass energy will provide excellent science from precision studies of the Higgs boson. Therefore, ICFA considers the ILC a key science project complementary to the LHC and its upgrade.
ICFA welcomes the efforts by the Linear Collider Collaboration on cost reductions for the ILC, which indicate that up to 40 percent cost reduction relative to the 2013 Technical Design Report (500 GeV ILC) is possible for a 250-GeV collider.
ICFA emphasizes the extendability of the ILC to higher energies and notes that there is large discovery potential with important additional measurements accessible at energies beyond 250 GeV.
ICFA thus supports the conclusions of the Linear Collider Board (LCB) in their report presented at this meeting and very strongly encourages Japan to realize the ILC in a timely fashion as a Higgs boson factory with a center-of-mass energy of 250 GeV as an international project1, led by Japanese initiative.
In the LCB report, the European XFEL and FAIR are mentioned as recent examples for international projects.