International Linear Collider Technical Design Report - Volume 2: Physics

For more than twenty years, an advanced electron-positron collider has been put forward as a key component of the future program of elementary particle physics. We have a well-established Standard Model of particle physics, but it is known to be incomplete. Among the many questions that this model leaves open, there are two — the origin of the masses of elementary particles and the particle identity of cosmic dark matter – that should be addressed at energy scales below 1 TeV. It has been appreciated for a long time that a next-generation electron-positron collider would give us the ability to make precision measurements that would shed light on these mysteries. Now the technology to build this electron-positron collider has come of age. This report is a volume of the Technical Design Report for the International Linear Collider (ILC). The accompanying volumes of this report lay out the technical design of a high-luminosity e⁺e^- collider at 500 GeV in the center of mass and of detectors that could make use of the collisions to perform high-precision measurements. In this volume, we summarize the physics arguments for building this collider and their appropriate relation to the situation of particle physics as of the fall of 2012. The discussion in this volume supplements the presentation of the physics opportunities for a 500 GeV e⁺e^- collider given in the review articles, the 2001 regional study reports, the 2006 study of ILC/LHC complementarity, and the 2007 ILC Reference Design Report.