Future e+e- Linear Colliders offer the potential to explore new physics at the TeV scale and beyond to very high precision. While the International Linear Collider (ILC) scheme of a collider in the 0.5 - 1 TeV range enters the engineering design phase, the Compact Linear Collider (CLIC) study explores the technical feasibility of a collider capable of reaching into the multi-TeV energy domain.
Key ingredients of the CLIC scheme are acceleration at high-frequency (30 GHz) and high-gradient (150 MV/m) in normal conducting structures and the use of the so-called Two Beam Acceleration concept, where a high-charge electron beam (drive beam) running parallel to the main beam is decelerated to provide the RF power to accelerate the main beam itself. A vigorous R&D effort is presently developed by the CLIC international collaboration to demonstrate its feasibility by 2010, when the first physics results from LHC should be available to guide the choice of the centre-of-mass energy better suited to explore the future frontier of particle physics. A number of formidable technological challenges must be addressed to achieve such a goal. In this lecture series the main issues, from drive beam generation and RF power production to high-gradient acceleration and special materials for accelerating structures, from high-precision alignment and stability to novel and demanding beam diagnostics equipment are discussed and the R&D activities presently ongoing and planned for the near future are presented.
