The ILC Committee and Technical Working Group, created by the Science Council of Japan to review the revised ILC plan, met on October 16th in Tokyo for their 8th meeting. After the meeting, Committee Chair Yasuhiro Iye (Director of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science) indicated that, starting from their next meeting, they would move towards creating their report after a series of closed discussions.

Six members each from the committee and the working group were in attendance, along with Prof. Tsuyoshi Nakaya of Kyoto University’s Graduate School of Science. He gave his opinion on the positioning of the ILC project within the field of particle physics research.

Prof. Nakaya said, “There is an international consensus that a Higgs factory (that would unlock the mysteries of the Higgs boson through mass producing the particle) is necessary for the next accelerator project.” He also explained, “However, my personal opinion as someone not directly involved with the ILC is that a high-energy linear collider is a powerful tool for particle physics experiments, but it is not the only tool. Other methods do exist.”

Some of the members asked whether it would be possible to secure the amount of necessary researchers in Japan. Prof. Nakaya responded, “There aren’t as many accelerator research groups in universities as there used to be, but there are many researchers who are involved with experiments that use accelerators. (If we get international cooperation) there is no need to have a majority of Japanese researchers.”

After the meeting, Chair Iye said, “We only planned hearings from experts up to this meeting. We’ll call some more experts if needed, but starting from the next meeting, we will have closed discussions and begin to create our report.”