Particle Physics Experiments—The Global Design Effort (GDE) of the ILC

As the International Linear Collider continues to define its roadmap going forward, Barry Barrish just released the GDE – Global Design Effort – outlining the stages of design, development, and deployment. The report also assigns a “value” to each component and research stage so contributing scientists know how each part relates to the other and what value that part offers. For example, the RF cavities used to propel the particles will each consist of a 1.3m length and numbering over 14,000 units. In addition, there will 560 RF units to generate the RF signals needed by the system. The entire system will consist of 6500 “value units” of which the instrumentation and controls is 7%.

The full reference design can be seen here. In addition, there’s a collaboration project with DESY called the Tesla Techn0logy Collaboration whose goal is to facilitate collaboration on accelerator/collider projects through work groups.

The GDE indicates they will follow a SCRF or Super Conducting Radio Frequency which aims to control the frequency, phase, and amplitude of the RF electric field in the superconducting
Cavity. The use of FPGA’s is a key component in the instrumentation used. The Penn Instrumentation Group develops front end electronics for accelerator detectors and other control systems.

Best regards,
Hall T.