Particle Physics & Their Control Systems--ILC

Particle Physics is the study of the elementary constituents of matter and energy. These elementary particles may be created through collisions created by particle accelerators. There are many sites dedicated to particle physics most of which reside in North America or Europe.

The International Linear Collider is an electron-positron collider that complements the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) based at CERN. The LHC will perform experiments that will guide the ILC in performing follow-up experiments which it can do with greater precision. The ILC is two colliders that face each other. This design will create greater amounts of energy for atom smashing. The ILC uses superconducting accelerator cavities to send electrons and other particles at nearly the speed of light. The system is nearly 35 kilometers in length creating 500 billion-electron-volts (GeV) in the process.

They recently completed the Reference Design Report phase and are not entering the Engineering Design Report phase. They recently made a call to the ILC engineering community for expressions of interest (EOI) to work on the controls systems. You can see the list of projects here.

While the project is admirable, we must keep in mind that the project is not yet funded. Funding is contingent on results of the LHC at CERN and international commitment to the ILC project.

Best regards,
Hall T.