The Global Linear Collider Project
Abstract
A world-wide consensus of the scientific community has been reached that construction of a high energy electron-positron linear collider is the highest priority for the next step in understanding the submicroscopic world of elementary forces and particles. Each of the three regions of Asia, Europe and the USA has proposed to build the facility in their region but have pledged cooperation no matter where it might be built.
The Global Linear Collider (GLC) is Asia's proposal for an energy-frontier e+e− machine to be built in Japan. When realized, the GLC will be the first large-scale international project in Asia in the field of basic science research, The construction of the accelerator complex and detector is expected to be completed in 5 to 6 years and the experiments in the first phase alone are expected to last for nearly ten years. Over several thousand scientists from all over the world will participate in these experiments.
The GLC will be a pair of linear accelerators installed in an underground straight tunnel about 30 km long. Very high energy collisions of electrons and positrons will he realized allowing a probe of the microscopic behavior of nature at levels as tiny as 10−18 m. The collisions of the two beams at the center of the tunnel where a detector records such will be at initial energies of 500\,GeV with upgrades beyond the 1 TeV scale. This energy is equivalent to 10−12 s after the Big Bang with a temperature of 1016 K thereby providing important clues to the history of the early universe.
Other Impacts and Benefits. As our understanding matter progresses, technology advances too. We have seen how particle detectors and data analysis enable medical imaging technology such as computer aided tomography (CT scans), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and positron emission tomography (PET scans). Tiny accelerators are used in medical diagnosis to detect early signs of cancer or heart disease. The world-wide-web developed at CERN in 1990 so that particle physicists could exchange data and documents with colleagues around the world, has transformed the way information is shared and business is done. Not to mention the tremendous sociological and educational benefits that a truly international GLC laboratory will promote. Just as J. J. Thompson and E. Rutherford over 100 years ago could not imagine the industrial applications of their discoveries on which our usual life today depends, nobody knows whether and how the Higgs particles or extra-dimensions of our world will enrich human life in the era of our grandchildren.
