The International Committee for Future Accelerators (ICFA), was created in 1976 by the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP). Its purpose is to facilitate international collaboration in the construction and use of accelerators for high energy physics.

ICFA GOALS

• To promote international collaboration in all phases of the construction and exploitation of very high energy accelerators;

• To organize world-inclusive meetings for the exchange of information on future plans for regional facilities;

• To formulate propositions on joint studies and uses of these installations;

• To organize workshops for the study of problems related to super high-energy accelerator complexes and their international exploitation;

• To foster research and development of the necessary technology.

The committee goal is to stimulate world-inclusive involvement in the innovation and development of new instrumentation for experiments at future accelerators.

PANEL ACTIVITIES

• Organization of the ICFA Instrumentation School;

• Sponsoring of Instrumentation Conferences and Workshops;

• Organization of Topical Instrumentation Workshops and Conferences in Developing Countries;

• Edition of the ICFA Instrumentation Bulletin;

• Sponsoring of the Detector Physics and Applications Center (DePAC, Germany).

The idea of organizing instrumentation schools in the developing countries is to stimulate the development of experimental particle physics in these countries. Presently several brazilian groups participate on accelerator experiments (Fermilab, CERN etc.) and cosmic rays observatories (Pierre Auger Project, SOAR etc.). The ICFA 2003 School appears as an opportunity for the Latin American groups to consolidate their contribution in instrumentation for the high energy physics experiments. It also promotes multidisciplinary interactions between researchers and engineers involved with experimental techniques.

SCHOOL HISTORY

Until the present date, nine schools have been organized:

• 1987, 1989 e 1991: Trieste, Italy;

• 1990: Rio de Janeiro, Brazil;

• 1993: Bombay, India;

• 1995: Ljubljana, Slovenia;

• 1997: Léon, Guanajuato, Mexico;

• 1999: Istanbul, Turkey

• 2001: Cape Town, South Africa.

SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNOLOGICAL GOALS

The school is devoted to the physics and technologies of instrumentation in elementary particle physics. Spin-offs as the nuclear medicine and more recently the WWW, the Monte Carlo Method or the supraconducting technology are well known examples of the impact of this basic research field. The devices used in this field are based on the generation and processing of images obtained by radiation detectors. Applications of such techniques to medicine, microbiology and nuclear sciences as well as to the research and development for non-destructive testing in industry are continuously growing fields. The synchrotron radiation research is probably the most fruitful spin-off from particle physics, along with the imaging methods using quantum detectors. It is important to note that scientific instrumentation is usually developed in university laboratories with relatively low investment costs. The cooperative character with other institutes, in particular with the large international research centers or industries allows, however, the interchange of the latest technological developments.

SCHOOL CONTENTS

The school program covers topics on physics of gaseous detectors, particle identification, calorimetry, silicon detectors, signal processing and data acquisition. In addition to the well established methods, several review talks will be dedicated to new technologies and to applications in medical physics, astrophysics and data acquisition. In the laboratory courses students will work in small groups to exercise selected experimental techniques: tomography, image acquisition, analog and digital signal processing, cosmic rays observation, accelerators simulation etc. Poster sessions will give the participants an opportunity to show their own research work and will stimulate discussion and information interchange.