Grant: Subatomic Physics Envelope - Project

The international community of particle physicists and a number of representative committees have formed a consensus opinion that the next major facility that is required to advance the understanding of matter, space, and time is a linear electron-positron collider, with an initial centre-of-mass energy of 500 GeV and the capability to be upgraded to 1 TeV. Such a facility will be able to examine, in detail, the mechanism of electroweak symmetry breaking and will give important clues about the nature of dark matter. The knowledge gained by the linear collider experiments and the LHC experiments is complementary; both facilities are needed to develop a more complete theory of fundamental particles and interactions. Work towards a detector design that will meet the physics demands of a Linear Collider is ongoing. A detailed detector concept document is envisaged to be part of the 2006 collider reference design report. For the past several years, Canadian groups have contributed to the worldwide effort to develop the physics case and the detector concepts. That work built on Canadian expertise developed in previous forefront electron-positron collider experiments. In this application, the Canadian group requests support to continue the detector R&D and concept studies for the International Linear Collider detector. This includes continued work on Time Projection Chambers (TPCs) with micro pattern gas detector readout and new calorimeter R&D studies. The proponents of this grant application expect that the Canadian ILC group will continue to grow as the ILC approaches the approval and construction phases. Support from NSERC will allow Canada to be an important participant in one of the most exciting scientific projects to be undertaken in the next decade.