Muon Collider Progress: Accelerators

A muon collider would be a powerful tool for exploring the energy-frontier with leptons, and would complement the studies now under way at the LHC. Such a device would offer several important benefits. Muons, like electrons, are point particles so the full center-of-mass energy is available for particle production. Moreover, on account of their higher mass, muons give rise to very little synchrotron radiation and produce very little beamstrahlung. The first feature permits the use of a circular collider that can make efficient use of the expensive rf system and whose footprint is compatible with an existing laboratory site. The second feature leads to a relatively narrow energy spread at the collision point. Designing an accelerator complex for a muon collider is a challenging task. Firstly, the muons are produced as a tertiary beam, so a high-power proton beam and a target that can withstand it are needed to provide the required luminosity of ~1 \times 10^34 cm^-2s^-1. Secondly, the beam is initially produced with a large 6D phase space, which necessitates a scheme for reducing the muon beam emittance ("cooling"). Finally, the muon has a short lifetime so all beam manipulations must be done very rapidly. The Muon Accelerator Program, led by Fermilab and including a number of U.S. national laboratories and universities, has undertaken design and R&D activities aimed toward the eventual construction of a muon collider. Design features of such a facility and the supporting R&D program are described.Comment: 9 pages; 13 figures. Contribution ID 345 Proc. of the DPF-2011 Conference, Providence, RI, August 8-13, 201

Status of the International Muon Ionization Cooling Experiment (MICE)

An international experiment to demonstrate muonionization cooling is scheduled for beam at RutherfordAppleton Laboratory (RAL) in 2007. The experimentcomprises one cell of the Study II cooling channel [1],along with upstream and downstream detectors to identifyindividual muons and measure their initial and final 6Dphase-space parameters to a precision of 0.1percent. Magneticdesign of the beam line and cooling channel are completeand portions are under construction. The experiment willbe described, including cooling channel hardware designs,fabrication status, and running plans. Phase 1 of theexperiment will prepare the beam line and providedetector systems, including time-of-flight, Cherenkov,scintillating-fiber trackers and their spectrometersolenoids, and an electromagnetic calorimeter. The Phase2 system will add the cooling channel components,including liquid-hydrogen absorbers embedded insuperconducting Focus Coil solenoids, 201-MHz normalconductingRF cavities, and their surrounding CouplingCoil solenoids. The MICE Collaboration goal is tocomplete the experiment by 2010; progress toward this isdiscussed

A Possible Hybrid Cooling Channel for a Neutrino Factory

A Neutrino Factory requires an intense and well-cooled (in transverse phase space) muon beam. We discuss a hybrid approach for a linear 4D cooling channel consisting of high-pressure gas-filled RF cavities- potentially allowing high gradients without breakdown- and discrete LiH absorbers to provide the necessary energy loss that results in the required muon beam cooling. We report simulations of the channel performance and its comparison with the vacuum case; we also briefly discuss technical and safety issues associated with cavities filled with high-pressure hydrogen gas. Even with additional windows that might be needed for safety reasons, the channel performance is comparable to that of the original, all-vacuum Feasibility Study 2a channel on which our design is based. If tests demonstrate that the gas-filled RF cavities can operate effectively with an intense beam of ionizing particles passing through them, our approach would be an attractive way of avoiding possible breakdown problems with a vacuum RF channel.Comment: 3 pages, 9 figures; submitted to IPAC10, The First International Particle Accelerator Conference, May 23-28, 201

Thoughts On Incorporating HPRF In A Linear Cooling Channel

We discuss a possible implementation of high-pressure gas-filled RF (HPRF) cavities in a linear cooling channel for muons and some of the technical issues that must be dealt with. The approach we describe is a hybrid approach that uses high-pressure hydrogen gas to avoid cavity breakdown, along with discrete LiH absorbers to provide the majority of the energy loss. Initial simulations show that the channel performs as well as the original vacuum RF channel while potentially avoiding the degradation in RF gradient associated with the strong magnetic field in the cooling channel.Comment: 5 pages, 8 figures, submitted to Proceedings of NUFACT0

The PEP-II Project: Low-Energy Ring Design and Project Status

We describe the present status of the PEP-II project. The project comprises four major systems: Injector, High-Energy Ring (HER), Low-Energy Ring (LER), and Interaction Region (IR). We focus in detail on the design of the LER, as its parameters and requirements are most closely related to those required for the Beijing Tau-Charm Factory rings. The PEP-II LER is a high-current, 3.1-GeV positron ring mounted above the 9-GeV HER. The LER uses a wiggler located in one of its six straight sections to provide emittance control and additional damping. We describe the rather complicated IR, which must transport the LER beam into the plane of the HER, focus it to a common beam size, and separate the beams after the head-on collisions. Both permanent magnet and conventional electromagnets are used in this area. The LER lattice has now adopted a simplified non-interleaved sextupole correction scheme that has reduced the required number of sextupoles substantially. We describe the LER vacuum system, one of the most challenging subsystems in PEP-II. It employs several technologies. In the arcs, aluminum extrusions and titanium sublimation pumps are employed; the straight sections use stainless steel chambers with lumped ion pumps. In the wiggler area, an extended copper photon dump with nonevaporable getter (NEG) pumps is employed to handle the very large synchrotron radiation power. The design of the room-temperature RF system, the bunch-by-bunch longitudinal and transverse feedback systems, and some of the special diagnostics will be described briefly. The PEP-II project remains on schedule to begin commissioning of the HER in April 1997, followed by the LER a year later

Technical implementation of feasibility study-II design

An updated Feasibility Study for a high-performance Neutrino Factory has been undertaken by Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) and the Neutrino Factory and Muon Collider Collaboration (MC). We describe the technical implementation of the facility. Details of the key components are shown, and R and D activities that need to be addressed to proceed toward a facility design are indicated

Effect of Particle Size on Droplet Infiltration into Hydrophobic Porous Media As a Model of Water Repellent Soil

The wettability of soil is of great importance for plants and soil biota, and in determining the risk for preferential flow, surface runoff, flooding,and soil erosion. The molarity of ethanol droplet (MED) test is widely used for quantifying the severity of water repellency in soils that show reduced wettability and is assumed to be independent of soil particle size. The minimum ethanol concentration at which droplet penetration occurs within a short time (≤10 s) provides an estimate of the initial advancing contact angle at which spontaneous wetting is expected. In this study, we test the assumption of particle size independence using a simple model of soil, represented by layers of small (0.2–2 mm) diameter beads that predict the effect of changing bead radius in the top layer on capillary driven imbibition. Experimental results using a three-layer bead system show broad agreement with the model and demonstrate a dependence of the MED test on particle size. The results show that the critical initial advancing contact angle for penetration can be considerably less than 90° and varies with particle size, demonstrating that a key assumption currently used in the MED testing of soil is not necessarily valid

The Design and Construction of the MICE Spectrometer Solenoids

The purpose of the MICE spectrometer solenoid is to provide a uniform field for a scintillating fiber tracker. The uniform field is produced by a long center coil and two short end coils. Together, they produce 4T field with a uniformity of better than 1% over a detector region of 1000 mm long and 300 mm in diameter. Throughout most of the detector region, the field uniformity is better than 0.3%. In addition to the uniform field coils, we have two match coils. These two coils can be independently adjusted to match uniform field region to the focusing coil field. The coil package length is 2544 mm. We present the spectrometer solenoid cold mass design, the powering and quench protection circuits, and the cryogenic cooling system based on using three cryocoolers with re-condensers

Preliminary Test Results for the MICE Spectrometer Superconducting Solenoids

This report describes the MICE spectrometer solenoids as built. Each magnet consists of five superconducting coils. Two coils are used to tune the beam going from or to the MICE spectrometer from the rest of the MICE cooling channel. Three spectrometer coils (two end coils and a long center coil) are used to create a uniform 4 T field (to {+-}0.3 percent) over a length of 1.0 m within a diameter of 0.3 m. The three-coil spectrometer set is connected in series. The two end coils use small power supplies to tune the uniform field region where the scintillating fiber tracker is located. This paper will present the results of the preliminary testing of the first spectrometer solenoid