Programmes

 

MICE -Muon Ionisation Cooling Experiment

 

The development of a future neutrino factory requires production and acceleration of  muon beams that is likely to employ a stage that damps the beam sizes.  One approach that could produce a low emittance muon beam is ionisation cooling and an experiment at Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) is being built to test this technique.

The Muon Ionisation Cooling Experiment (MICE) consists of a cooling channel that accepts a muon beam generated by plunging a target into the proton beam on the RAL ISIS machine. The beam then enters a hydrogen absorber where the beam emittance is reduced with RF cavities being used to restore the longitudinal momentum.  In the experiment there are three absorbers equipped with superconducting focus coils, interspaced with RF cavities constructed in two banks of four cavities each immersed in a 2.5 Tesla field generated by a superconducting magnet. An accelerating gradient of up to 8MV/m is possible across the cooling channel, with each cavity powered by 1 Mega Watt (MW) of RF power.
ASTeC contributes to the beam physics studies and also to the production of the high power RF accelerating system.

 

Contact: Mike Poole