Collaborative Research: Participation in the MICE Experiment

人们对使用粒子加速器来形成非常强烈的高能介子束越来越感兴趣。然而，由于它的平均寿命很短（2.2微秒），它不可能加速介子束。证明介子加速器可行性的关键步骤是介子电离冷却实验（MICE）。加速强μ子光束的主要障碍是，这种光束产生的方式使得它们太大，无法放入同步加速器的真空室，而且μ子的寿命很短，几乎没有时间收缩光束。电离冷却是一种快速收缩或冷却介子束的新技术。MICE的目标是建立一段电离冷却通道，用仪器测量其冷却性能，并使用粒子加速器产生的介子束来证明它按设计工作。来自欧洲、亚洲和美国的约150名物理学家和工程师共同努力，在英国卢瑟福阿普尔顿实验室安装了MICE。仪器的建造目前正在进行中，实验的运行和结果的分析预计将在这里提出的拨款的3年期间进行。该提案要求为伊利诺伊理工学院MICE小组提供新的资金，以支持美国在μ子冷却和μ子加速器设施方面继续保持领导地位，一旦证明了电离冷却的可行性，这些设施可能会在美国或其他地方建造。这项工作的广泛影响最明显的是在中微子工厂中使用加速μ介子束，这被认为是迄今为止最强大的工具，用于探索中微子的神秘振荡行为及其在我们所生活的物质主导的宇宙进化中的可能作用。此外，MICE的开发、运行和分析的速度特别适合学生的训练。MICE大约需要三年时间才能完成，适合典型的物理学生吗？研究生培训。

There is increasing interest in using particle accelerators to form very intense beams of high-energy muons. However, due to its short average lifetime (2.2 microseconds), it has not been possible to accelerate a muon beam. A key step in demonstrating the feasibility of muon accelerators is the Muon Ionization Cooling Experiment (MICE). The main obstacle to accelerating an intense muon beam is that the way such beams are created makes them too large to fit into the vacuum chamber of a synchrotron, and the short muon lifetime leaves little time to shrink the beam. Ionization cooling is a new technique to shrink, or cool a muon beam quickly. The goal of MICE is to build a section of an ionization-cooling channel, instrument it to measure its cooling performance, and use a muon beam produced at a particle accelerator to demonstrate that it works as designed. A collaborative effort of some 150 physicists and engineers from Europe, Asia, and the US, MICE is being mounted at England's Rutherford Appleton Laboratory. Construction of the apparatus is currently in progress, and the running of the experiment and analysis of its results is expected to take place during the 3-year period of the grant proposed here. This proposal requests renewal funding for the Illinois Institute of Technology MICE group in support of continued US leadership in muon cooling and in the muon accelerator facilities that might be constructed, in the US or elsewhere, once the feasibility of ionization cooling is demonstrated. The broader impact of this work is most evident in the use of an accelerated muon beam for a Neutrino Factory recognized as the most powerful tool yet conceived in the quest to understand the mysterious oscillatory behavior of the neutrino and its possible role in the evolution of the matter-dominated Universe in which we live. In addition, the pace of MICE development, running, and analysis is particularly well suited to the training of students. MICE will take approximately three years to complete, a good fit to the typical physics student?s graduate training.