CLIC, a 0.5 to 5 TeV e$^{\pm}$ Compact Linear Collider

The CLIC study of a high energy (0.5 5 TeV), high luminosity (10 10 cm sec) e± linear collider is presented. Beam acceleration using high frequency (30 GHz) normal-conducting structures operating at high accelerating fields (100 to 200 MV/m) significantly reduces the length and, in consequence, the cost of the linac. Based on new beam and linac parameters derived from a recently developed set of general scaling laws for linear colliders, the beam stability is shown to be similar to lower frequency designs in spite of the strong wakefield dependency on frequency. A new cost-effective and efficient drive beam generation scheme for RF power production by the so-called "Two Beam Acceleration (TBA)" method is described. It uses a thermionic gun and a fully-loaded normal-conducting linac operating at low frequency (937 MHz) to generate and accelerate the drive beam bunches, and RF multiplication by funnelling in compressor rings to produce the desired bunch structure. Recent 30 GHz hardware developments and results from the CLIC Test Facility (CTF), assessing the feasibility of the scheme, are described.