MICE: The International Muon Ionization Cooling Experiment: Phase Space Cooling Measurement

Abstract

MICE is an experiment with a section of an ionization cooling channel and a muon beam. The muons will be produced by the decay of pions from a target dipping into the ISIS proton beam at Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL). The channel includes liquid-hydrogen absorbers providing transverse and longitudinal momentum loss and high-gradient radiofrequency (RF) cavities for longitudinal reacceleration, all packed into a solenoidal magnetic channel. MICE will reduce the beam transverse emittance by about 10% for muon momenta between 140 and 240 MeV/c. Time-of-flight (TOF) counters, a threshold Cherenkov counter, and a calorimeter will identify background electrons and pions. Spectrometers before and after the cooling section will measure the beam transmission and input and output emittances with an absolute precision of 0.1%.