The United States and Europe are currently designing and building large physics facilities with superconducting
radiofrequency cavities similar to what the ILC will use, and many of those scientists and engineers will become available to work on the ILC, Okada says.
Cooled to extremely low temperature, these «superconducting»
cavities allow
radiofrequency fields to boost electron energies without electrical resistance — a crucial property for the acceleration of electrons at a rate of up to a million bunches per second.