First demonstration of ionization cooling by the Muon Ionization Cooling Experiment

TL;DR

This paper reports the first experimental demonstration of ionization cooling for muon beams, a crucial step towards producing high-brightness muon sources for advanced particle physics research.

Contribution

It provides the first experimental validation of ionization cooling, a novel technique essential for high-brightness muon beam production.

Findings

Successful demonstration of ionization cooling in a muon beam

Reduction of muon beam phase space volume achieved

Ground-breaking measurements confirming the technique's viability

Abstract

High-brightness muon beams of energy comparable to those produced by state-of-the-art electron, proton and ion accelerators have yet to be realised. Such beams have the potential to carry the search for new phenomena in lepton-antilepton collisions to extremely high energy and also to provide uniquely well-characterised neutrino beams. A muon beam may be created through the decay of pions produced in the interaction of a proton beam with a target. To produce a high-brightness beam from such a source requires that the phase space volume occupied by the muons be reduced (cooled). Ionization cooling is the novel technique by which it is proposed to cool the beam. The Muon Ionization Cooling Experiment collaboration has constructed a section of an ionization cooling cell and used it to provide the first demonstration of ionization cooling. We present these ground-breaking measurements.