Symmetry factor

Courtesy to Tom Browder, I learned a very good news today: despite recent problems with UK and US budgets for high energy physics research, Japaneese government decided to go ahead with the construction of a “Super-B” factory at KEK and continue strong commitment to the International Linear Collider (ILC). According to Atsuto Suzuki, the KEK’s Director General (full report can be found here):

“The roadmap planning committee has proposed to start an early upgrade of KEKB to realize a unique research facility that will enable advanced studies on rare B decays, and to conduct a strong R&D program on superconducting cavities and related topics in order to contribute to the early realization of the ILC. I support the proposal by the committee.”

(a graphical representation of KEK’s radmap plan can be found here and a complete 5-year roundmap is here).

Actually, KEK officials metioned the possibility of building super-B factory at KEK, if construction of the ILC is delayed, for quite a long time — I personally heard it at the PANIC-2005 conference. It appears that they will be doing just that. It is intersting that papers such as this one, where some nice measurements (with super-B factory) of CP-violating parameters are proposed, might actually be relevant… of course at that time the US own roadmap involved construction of Fermilab’s B-factory BTeV as an intermediate-scale project before ILC is built. There is a good chance now that ILC will actually be built in Japan, leaving US on a side of the road of modern experimental high energy physics…

P.S. see the commentary of this in the Physics World here.