Bright muon source driven by GeV electron beams from a compact laser wakefield accelerator

TL;DR

This paper presents a systematic Monte Carlo simulation study demonstrating that a compact laser wakefield accelerator can produce a highly directional, intense, and short-pulsed GeV muon source suitable for various advanced physics applications.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach to generate a bright, directional muon source using GeV electron beams from laser wakefield acceleration in a compact setup.

Findings

Achieves peak brightness of 5x10^17 muon pairs/s/cm^2/sr.

Produces muon pairs with sub-100-ps duration.

Source size and emittance are about 1 mm and 40 microns.

Abstract

We report here a systematic quantitative study on generation and characteristics of an active muon source driven by the interaction of an electron beam within the energy range of 1 to 10 GeV from laser wakefield acceleration (LWFA) with a tungsten target, using Monte Carlo simulations. The 10GeV electron beam, achievable in near future, from LWFA using femtosecond multi-PW lasers is employed to drive the bright source of muon pairs in a compact setup. We show that a highly directional and intense source of short-pulsed GeV muon pairs having peak brightness 5x10^17 pairs/s/cm^2/sr and sub-100-ps duration could be produced using a quasi-monoenergetic 10-fs, 10-GeV electron bunch with 1-mrad divergence and 100-pC charge. The muon pairs are emitted from a point-like source with well-defined position and timing, and the source has size and geometric emittance about 1 mm and 40 microns, respectively. Such muon sources can greatly benefit applications in muon radiography, studies on anomalous dipole moment and rare decays of muons, neutrino oscillations, and an injector of a future compact muon collider.