At its summer 1999 meeting, ICFA produced its Statement on Linear Colliders acknowledging that scientific panels charged with studying future directions for particle physics in Asia, Europe and North America have concluded that "there would be compelling and unique scientific opportunities at a linear electron-positron collider in the TeV energy range. Such a facility is a necessary complement to the LHC hadron collider now under construction at CERN. Experimental results over the last decade from the electron-positron colliders LEP and SLC combined with those from the Tevatron, a hadron collider, have led to this worldwide consensus."
The Statement went on to say that "Major laboratories around the world are presently conducting accelerator research and development that will lead to detailed designs of a linear electron-positron collider capable of reaching this energy range. The statement concluded with "We believe that an electron-positron collider optimized for the new physics should be built in a timely way with international participation."
Sufficient progress has now been made that the worldwide community must come together to do a fully internationalized design aimed at as rapid a construction start as is possible. To guide the international community through the R&D phase to construction, ICFA set up last year the International Linear Collider Steering Committee (ILCSC) chaired by Maury Tigner.
In order to commence an international design, the community must decide which of the two leading linac RF technologies will form the best choice for the machine construction. On the one hand, there are designs based on conventional, room-temperature copper cavities, on the other hand there is the technology using superconducting cavities. This challenging task will be done by a twelve-person committee, four from each region, known as the International Technology Recommendation Panel (ITRP).
At its meeting on November 19 2003 in Paris, the ILCSC finalized the selection of the ITRP, its Chair and charter. ICFA Chairman Jonathan Dorfan, with unanimous support of the ICFA members, announced today the following members and Chair for the ITRP:
Gyung-Su Lee Akira Masaike Katsunobu Oide Hirotaka Sugawara from Asia Jean-Eudes Augustin Giorgio Bellettini George Kalmus Volker Soergel from Europe Jonathan Bagger Barry Barish (Chair) Paul Grannis Norbert Holtkamp. from North AmericaThe first meeting of the ITRP will be in January 2004.