The Next Linear Collider Program
The Next Linear Collider Program, led by the NLC Group at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, is a collaborative R&D effort to design a TeV-scale, next-generation linear e+e- collider. Participating U.S. laboratories, supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, include in addition to SLAC, the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (FNAL), the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL). Internationally there is an R&D collaboration established through a Memorandum of Understanding between SLAC and KEK in which LBNL and LLNL also participate. The Final-Focus Test Beam experiment located at SLAC to develop beam demagnification technology for the NLC, was built and operated by a large international collaboration including BINP (Protvino), DESY, FNAL, KEK, LAL d'Orsay, MPI (Munich) and SLAC. SLAC, LBNL and LLNL participate in experiments at the Accelerator Test Facility located at KEK, and scientists from KEK, LLNL and LBNL participate in experiments at the SLAC Next Linear Collider Test Accelerator, providing further international collaboration. It is anticipated that an international collaboration will be formed to produce a final machine design and a joint construction project.