The compact linear collider CLIC

A high luminosity (10e34 - 10e35 cm square/s) electron-positron Collider (CLIC) with a nominal centre-of-mass energy of 3 TeV has been under study for a number of years at CERN within an international collaboration of laboratories and institutes to provide the HEP community with a new accelerator-based facility for the post-LHC era. In order to achieve the very high design luminosity, very low emittance beams have to be produced and focused down to very small beam sizes at the interaction point. Beam acceleration using high frequency normal-conducting structures operating at high accelerating fields significantly reduces the length and, in consequence, the cost of the linac. The overall length of the 3 TeV collider is about 33 km. The goals of the CLIC scheme are ambitious, and require further R&D to demonstrate that they are indeed technically feasible. A new test facility is being built at CERN for this purpose with the aim to demonstrate the key feasibility issues before 2010.