Physical Society Colloquium

Particle Accelerators: Mega-Science for the Ultra-Small

William Trischuk

University of Toronto & IPP

After a brief reminder of the physics that drives the need for ever higher energy particle colliders, I will describe the largest the scientific endeavour ever undertaken and our plans for its successor. While the fundamental goals, to probe nature at its most fundamental scale, are widely accepted the size of the teams involved and the international cooperation required for them to succeed is sometimes misunderstood.

The LHC, will produce its first collisions within weeks outside Geneva, Switzerland. In the process it will extend the frontier by an order of magnitude in energy and collision rate. The ILC, currently the subject of intense design and R&D is pushing every facet of accelerator technology with the goal of taking up where the LHC leaves off. I will show examples of Canada's involvement in these two mega-science projects and, in the process, try to shed some light on their inner workings explaining how traditional research groups make essential contributions. At the same time I will show how the advances made in the pursuit of fundamental particle physics questions impact our day-to-day lives.