SOI: International Muon Ionisation Cooling Experiment (MICE)

Ionisation cooling of muon beams is included in the baseline design of both the US and European Neutrino Factories. The physics program for these facilities is broad, and outlined elsewhere. One of the key measurements would be an observation and measurement of CP violation in the lepton sector. [1] Ionisation cooling is used to reduce the phase space volume of a muon beam generated by pion decay so that the beam can be injected into a conventional accelerator. An increase of at least a factor of ten in neutrino flux from a Neutrino Factory is expected using muon cooling. This increase is crucial for the success of the physics programme at a Neutrino Factory. In addition, the Neutrino Factory cooling system will provide a step toward the cooling necessary to build a muon collider. Muon cooling has never been demonstrated experimentally and such a demonstration is considered a key test before construction of a Neutrino Factory can begin. [2] The MICE experiment seeks to demonstrate muon cooling in a fully engineered section of cooling channel, and to explore any differences in performance between the realization and simulation of the channel. The experiment is based on the idea of measuring single muons traversing the channel and reconstructing a synthetic beam offline. The emittance of this beam will be calculated and compared to the results of simulation. By varying parameters in both the experiment and the simulation, the full parameter space of the cooling channel can be mapped. The purpose of this mapping is two-fold; it demonstrates that cooling can be achieved in a physically realizable system and it allows tuning of the simulations so that the channel can be optimised with confidence.