Linear colliders

Past and present colliding beam machines have provided us with spectacular views of the interactions of quarks and leptons at center of mass energies from a few GeV up to the masses of the gauge bosons that mediate the electro-weak forces of nature. Experiments have confirmed that the Standard Model of these interactions provides an accurate description of particle physics in this energy domain. The confirmation of this model, however, is incomplete until scientist have determined the nature of the breaking of the exact SU(2) X U(1) symmetry that is at its base. It is widely believed that to accomplish this goal, it will be necessary to explore particle physics at center of mass energies well above the masses of the W and Z bosons. This paper is about the design philosophy of such a linear collider. It first begins with a review of SLC performance. This is followed by a section detailing how the energy of the collider is obtained. Next it discusses those issues which contribute to luminosity. Finally, the authors present a brief outlook