Scientists will gather at NIU
to discuss design of linear collider detectors

by Tom Parisi

About 30 of the world's top scientists in particle physics will visit NIU for a Nov. 7-9 workshop on the beginning phase of detector design for a linear collider.

"The linear, or straight-line, collider represents the next generation of particle accelerators, which scientists use to explore the microscopic structure of the universe," NIU Physics Professor Jerry Blazey said.

Blazey is co-director of the Northern Illinois Center for Accelerator and Detector Development (NICADD), based on the NIU campus. NICADD is sponsoring the workshop, which is drawing visitors from as far away as France and Germany.

Typically circular in design, particle accelerators smash together tiny bits of invisible matter to produce new particles. The experiments help researchers identify and understand the most basic building blocks of nature.

"Detectors are important, highly technical components in a particle accelerator," Blazey said. "These mechanical devices must process millions of particle collisions per second and identify the most interesting particles for storage on data tapes. The scientists visiting NIU are getting together to build the software that's needed to simulate and design detectors that would be used in a linear collider."

The more powerful and efficient the accelerator, the more deeply scientists can probe the subatomic universe.

The world's most powerful collider is the Tevatron, located at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory near Batavia. The Tevatron collides protons and antiprotons traveling toward each other at nearly the speed of light in a four-mile underground ring. However, the Tevatron will be surpassed in its research capabilities in 2006 by a circular collider under construction in Europe.

For the past decade, physicists worldwide have contemplated how to go about building a
linear collider that could produce particles of mass and energies far surpassing even the next European collider.

"It would succeed the machines operating at Fermilab and soon to be operating in Europe," Blazey said.

Blazey credits Assistant Professor Dhiman Chakraborty for organizing the NIU workshop. "The meeting is significant since it is one of the first opportunities in the United States to discuss detection algorithms in the context of a linear collider detector," Blazey said.

More information on the workshop is available online at http://nicadd.niu.edu/ws/.

11/4/2002