Linear Collider Research at UCL

UCL has been working since 1991 towards construction of the 500 GeV to 1 TeV International Linear Collider (ILC). An e+e- linear collider in the energy range 0.5–1 TeV will be essential to make precise measurements in the region of electroweak symmetry-breaking opened up by the LHC. The International Linear Collider (ILC) project was created in 2004, with the key decision to pursue superconducting technology for the radio-frequency cavities which will accelerate the beam.

Our current R&D is part of the European AIDA-2020 programme, developing a common DAQ system for linear collider detector beam tests. The DAQ system will provide numerous common tools, such as synchronising and control hardware and software for run control and data quality monitoring. This will enable multiple detectors to be run together in a beam test, such as a tracker and a calorimeter, with a simpler integration and more efficient data taking. This will allow detectors to focus more on understanding performance and global detector issues and so lead to an increased scientific output.

We have previously worked on the design of an electron energy spectrometer. This focused on analysing the production of top-quark pairs which relies on a precise measurement of the energies of the electron and positron beams for the energy scan to measure the mass of the top quark. The principal instrumentation development concentrated on design of beam position monitors specifically tailored to the energy spectrometer.

Our other previous significant R&D work was development of a common DAQ system for the multitude of calorimeters in the CALICE collaboration. The system was based around commercial standards and provided solutions for current beam tests as well as a vision for a future full ILC DAQ.