Emittance Measurement in MICE

TL;DR

The paper discusses the development of the MICE experiment, which aims to precisely measure muon beam emittance to evaluate ionization cooling effectiveness for future high-brilliance muon sources.

Contribution

Introduction of the first particle detectors designed to measure muon beam emittance with 0.1% accuracy in a cooling experiment.

Findings

Successful implementation of emittometers with scintillating fibers and timing stations.

Achievement of 0.1% emittance measurement precision.

Verification of muon beam purity using Cherenkov counters and calorimeters.

Abstract

Muon ionization cooling provides the only practical solution to prepare high-brilliance beams necessary for a neutrino factory or muon collider. The Muon Ionization Cooling Experiment (MICE), under development at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, is installing the first set of particle detectors ever built to measure to 0.1% the emittance of a 200 MeV/c or so muon beam in and out of a cooling cell, and thus measure the cooling cell's performance. Two identical "emittometers" (a precise scintillating-fiber tracker in solenoidal magnetic field and a 50 ps time-of-flight station) measure the six phase-space coordinates of each muon. Another TOF plane and two Cherenkov counters assure the purity of the incoming muon beam. A downstream electron/muon calorimeter eliminates contamination from decay electrons.