Collaborative Research: Participation in the MICE Experiment

使用粒子加速器来形成非常强的高能μ子束的兴趣越来越大。 然而，由于它的平均寿命短（2.2微秒），它一直不可能加速μ子束。证明μ子加速器可行性的关键步骤是μ子电离冷却实验（MICE）。 加速强μ子束的主要障碍是，产生这种束的方式使它们太大而无法放入同步加速器的真空室，而且短μ子寿命几乎没有时间收缩束。电离冷却是一种快速压缩或冷却μ子束流的新技术。 MICE的目标是建立一个电离冷却通道的一部分，测量其冷却性能，并使用粒子加速器产生的μ子束来证明它按设计工作。 来自欧洲、亚洲和美国的大约150名物理学家和工程师共同努力，MICE正在英国卢瑟福阿普尔顿实验室进行。 该装置的建设目前正在进行中，实验的运行和结果的分析预计将在这里提出的赠款的3年期间进行。 该提案要求为伊利诺伊理工学院MICE小组提供更新资金，以支持美国在μ子冷却和可能在美国或其他地方建造的μ子加速器设施方面继续保持领导地位，一旦电离冷却的可行性得到证明。 这项工作的更广泛的影响是最明显的是在中微子工厂中使用加速的μ子束，被认为是迄今为止最强大的工具，用于理解中微子的神秘振荡行为及其在我们生活的物质主导的宇宙演化中可能发挥的作用。 此外，MICE开发，运行和分析的速度特别适合学生的培训。 MICE将需要大约三年的时间来完成，一个很好的适合典型的物理学生？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.