The ILC scientific community has developed a set of benchmark physics processes that drive the design of the ILC accelerator and its detectors. A design aims at measuring all the benchmark processes with high precision and high accuracy. Scientists are searching for detector designs that will have excellent sensitivity to as many of the benchmark processes as possible.
A critical tool that scientists use to design new detectors is advanced software to produce high quality simulated data. Scientists use the simulated data to develop the reconstruction and analysis algorithms that disentangle the exciting new physics from the myriad backgrounds. Designing a detector is an iterative process. Starting with simplified models of the detector, scientists can rapidly explore the available parameter space, putting their focus on promising designs and eliminating poor ones. With each iteration more details and more fidelity are built into the detector models and more refinements are added to the reconstruction and analysis algorithms. Eventually, when the simulation tools are fully developed, the simulation software will produce simulated data that is almost indistinguishable from that produced by an actual experiment. Using the mature reconstruction and analysis algorithms, scientists can accurately determine the sensitivity of the proposed detectors to the critical benchmarks.