Neutrino factories: realization and physics potential

Neutrino Factories offer an exciting option for the long-term neutrino physics program. This new type of neutrino facility will provide beams with unique properties. Low systematic uncertainties at a Neutrino Factory, together with a unique and precisely known neutrino flavor content, will enable neutrino oscillation measurements to be made with unprecedented sensitivity and precision. Over recent years, the resulting neutrino factory physics potential has been discussed extensively in the literature. In addition, over the last six years the R&D necessary to realize a Neutrino Factory has been progressing, and has developed into a significant international activity. It is expected that, within about five more years, the initial phase of this R&D program will be complete and, if the community chooses to build this new type of neutrino source within the following decade, neutrino factory technology will be ready for the final R&D phase prior to construction. In this paper (1) an overview is given of the technical ingredients needed for a Neutrino Factory, (2) beam properties are described, (3) the resulting neutrino oscillation physics potential is summarized, (4) a more detailed description is given for one representative Neutrino Factory design, and (5) the ongoing R&D program is summarized, and future plans briefly described

Interim Design Report

The International Design Study for the Neutrino Factory (the IDS-NF) was established by the community at the ninth "International Workshop on Neutrino Factories, super-beams, and beta- beams" which was held in Okayama in August 2007. The IDS-NF mandate is to deliver the Reference Design Report (RDR) for the facility on the timescale of 2012/13. In addition, the mandate for the study [3] requires an Interim Design Report to be delivered midway through the project as a step on the way to the RDR. This document, the IDR, has two functions: it marks the point in the IDS-NF at which the emphasis turns to the engineering studies required to deliver the RDR and it documents baseline concepts for the accelerator complex, the neutrino detectors, and the instrumentation systems. The IDS-NF is, in essence, a site-independent study. Example sites, CERN, FNAL, and RAL, have been identified to allow site-specific issues to be addressed in the cost analysis that will be presented in the RDR. The choice of example sites should not be interpreted as implying a preferred choice of site for the facility

MICE: The muon ionization cooling experiment. Step I: First measurement of emittance with particle physics detectors

Copyright @ 2011 APSThe Muon Ionization Cooling Experiment (MICE) is a strategic R&D project intended to demonstrate the only practical solution to providing high brilliance beams necessary for a neutrino factory or muon collider. MICE is under development at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) in the United Kingdom. It comprises a dedicated beamline to generate a range of input muon emittances and momenta, with time-of-flight and Cherenkov detectors to ensure a pure muon beam. The emittance of the incoming beam will be measured in the upstream magnetic spectrometer with a scintillating fiber tracker. A cooling cell will then follow, alternating energy loss in Liquid Hydrogen (LH2) absorbers to RF cavity acceleration. A second spectrometer, identical to the first, and a second muon identification system will measure the outgoing emittance. In the 2010 run at RAL the muon beamline and most detectors were fully commissioned and a first measurement of the emittance of the muon beam with particle physics (time-of-flight) detectors was performed. The analysis of these data was recently completed and is discussed in this paper. Future steps for MICE, where beam emittance and emittance reduction (cooling) are to be measured with greater accuracy, are also presented.This work was supported by NSF grant PHY-0842798

Interim Design Report

The International Design Study for the Neutrino Factory (the IDS-NF) was established by the community at the ninth International Workshop on Neutrino Factories, super-beams, and beta- beams which was held in Okayama in August 2007. The IDS-NF mandate is to deliver the Reference Design Report (RDR) for the facility on the timescale of 2012/13. In addition, the mandate for the study [3] requires an Interim Design Report to be delivered midway through the project as a step on the way to the RDR. This document, the IDR, has two functions: it marks the point in the IDS-NF at which the emphasis turns to the engineering studies required to deliver the RDR and it documents baseline concepts for the accelerator complex, the neutrino detectors, and the instrumentation systems. The IDS-NF is, in essence, a site-independent study. Example sites, CERN, FNAL, and RAL, have been identified to allow site-specific issues to be addressed in the cost analysis that will be presented in the RDR. The choice of example sites should not be interpreted as implying a preferred choice of site for the facility

Neutrinos

229 pages229 pages229 pagesThe Proceedings of the 2011 workshop on Fundamental Physics at the Intensity Frontier. Science opportunities at the intensity frontier are identified and described in the areas of heavy quarks, charged leptons, neutrinos, proton decay, new light weakly-coupled particles, and nucleons, nuclei, and atoms

Effect of high solenoidal magnetic fields on breakdown voltages of high vacuum 805 MHz cavities

There is an on going international collaboration studying the feasibility and cost of building a muon collider or neutrino factory [1,2]. An important aspect of this study is the full understanding of ionization cooling of muons by many orders of magnitude for the collider case. An important muon ionization cooling experiment, MICE [3], has been proposed to demonstrate and validate the technology that could be used for cooling. Ionization cooling is accomplished by passing a high-emittance muon beam alternately through regions of low Z material, such as liquid hydrogen, and very high accelerating RF Cavities within a multi-Tesla solenoidal field. To determine the effect of very large solenoidal magnetic fields on the generation of dark current, x-rays and on the breakdown voltage gradients of vacuum RF cavities, a test facility has been established at Fermilab in Lab G. This facility consists of a 12 MW 805 MHz RF station and a large warm bore 5 T solenoidal superconducting magnet containing a pill box type cavity with thin removable window apertures. This system allows dark current and breakdown studies of different window configurations and materials. The results of this study will be presented. The study has shown that the peak achievable accelerating gradient is reduced by a factor greater than 2 when solenoidal field of greater than 2 T are applied to the cavity