While the Large Hadron Collider at CERN is producing exciting results like the discovery of a new particle that could be the Higgs boson, scientists around the world are already planning the next big collider to take the discoveries to the next level. Even though there is no decision yet which collider will be built or where, there is consensus in the scientific community that the results from the LHC will have to be complemented by a collider that can study the discoveries in greater detail by producing different kinds of collisions.
The Linear Collider Collaboration is an organisation that brings the two most likely candidates, the Compact Linear Collider Study (CLIC) and the International Liner Collider (ILC), together under one roof. Headed by former LHC Project Manager Lyn Evans, it strives to coordinate the research and development work that is being done for accelerators and detectors around the world and to take the project linear collider to the next step: a decision that it will be built, and where.
Some 2000 scientists — particle physicists, accelerator physicists, engineers — are involved in the ILC or in CLIC, and often in both projects. They work on state-of-the-art detector technologies, new acceleration techniques, the civil engineering aspect of building a straight tunnel of at least 30 kilometres in length, a reliable cost estimate and many more aspects that projects of this scale require. The Linear Collider Collaboration ensures that synergies between the two friendly competitors are used to the maximum.