The International Linear Collider will produce more powerful electron-positron collisions than any machine in the past. There is global consensus in the high energy physics community that the detector requirements for a collider detector at the International Linear Collider far exceed present day technology. The physics program of the ILC requires further advances in detector technology to access the spectrum of physics processes anticipated at the energy frontier. The primary challenges for detectors at the linear collider are vertex resolution, flavor identification for bottom and charm jets, track momentum resolution, jet energy resolution, establishing particle flow algorithms, and unprecedented hermiticity.

From large-scale silicon detectors to digital calorimetry, Fermilab scientists and scientists around the world are studying the feasibility of different detector systems. At Fermilab, in collaboration with other laboratories and universities, detector research and development is carried out in areas critical to the linear collider detector concepts. Forefront studies are progressing in the areas of sensor technology for monolithic active pixel detectors, hybrid pixel detectors, design of low mass vertex detectors and silicon trackers, high field solenoids, muon detectors and particle flow calorimetry. All design studies are guided by physics simulations. The primary goal is to establish the proof of principle of each technology on a timescale compatible with the start of construction of the accelerator.