Demonstration of cooling by the Muon Ionization Cooling Experiment

Bogomilov, M. and Whyte, C. G. and Ronald, K. and Young, A. R. and Chatzitheodoridis, G. T. and Dick, A. J., The MICE collaboration (2020) Demonstration of cooling by the Muon Ionization Cooling Experiment. Nature, 578. pp. 53-59. ISSN 0028-0836 (https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-1958-9)

[thumbnail of Bogomilov-etal-Nature-2020-Demonstration-of-cooling-by-the-Muon-Ionization-Cooling-Experiment]
Preview
 Text. Filename: Bogomilov_etal_Nature_2020_Demonstration_of_cooling_by_the_Muon_Ionization_Cooling_Experiment.pdf
Final Published Version
License: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 logo
Download (2MB)| Preview

Abstract

The use of accelerated beams of electrons, protons or ions has furthered the development of nearly every scientific discipline. However, high-energy muon beams of equivalent quality have not yet been delivered. Muon beams can be created through the decay of pions produced by the interaction of a proton beam with a target. Such 'tertiary' beams have much lower brightness than those created by accelerating electrons, protons or ions. High-brightness muon beams comparable to those produced by state-of-the-art electron, proton and ion accelerators could facilitate the study of lepton–antilepton collisions at extremely high energies and provide well characterized neutrino beams 1–6. Such muon beams could be realized using ionization cooling, which has been proposed to increase muon-beam brightness 7,8. Here we report the realization of ionization cooling, which was confirmed by the observation of an increased number of low-amplitude muons after passage of the muon beam through an absorber, as well as an increase in the corresponding phase-space density. The simulated performance of the ionization cooling system is consistent with the measured data, validating designs of the ionization cooling channel in which the cooling process is repeated to produce a substantial cooling effect 9–11. The results presented here are an important step towards achieving the muon-beam quality required to search for phenomena at energy scales beyond the reach of the Large Hadron Collider at a facility of equivalent or reduced footprint 6.

ORCID iDs

Bogomilov, M., Whyte, C. G. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5431-2443, Ronald, K. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8585-0746, Young, A. R. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3494-1242, Chatzitheodoridis, G. T. and Dick, A. J.;
  • Item type:Article
    ID code:71821
    Dates:
    Date
    Event
    6 February 2020
    Published
    5 February 2020
    Published Online
    13 December 2019
    Accepted
    Subjects:Science > Physics
    Department:Faculty of Science > Physics
    Depositing user: Pure Administrator
    Date deposited:19 Mar 2020 14:35
    Last modified:23 Nov 2024 01:14
    Related URLs:
    URI:https://strathprints.strath.ac.uk/id/eprint/71821
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)