The Feasibility Study of the GeV-Energy Muon Source Based on HIAF

TL;DR

This study explores the potential of the HIAF accelerator to generate high-energy, mono-energetic muon beams with high flux and purity, suitable for advanced scientific applications like muon tomography and new physics searches.

Contribution

It provides a detailed feasibility analysis of producing GeV-energy muon beams at HIAF, including flux, purity, and purification strategies, which is a novel assessment for this facility.

Findings

Maximum muon yield of 8.2 million muons/sec for μ+ at 3.5 GeV/c

Maximum muon yield of 4.2 million muons/sec for μ− at 1.5 GeV/c

Potential to achieve 100% purity muon beams with flux around 10^5 μ/sec after purification

Abstract

Generating a mono-energetic, high-energy muon beam using accelerator facilities can be very attractive for many purposes, for example, improving muon tomography currently limited by the low flux and wide energy spread of cosmic ray muons, and searching for muon related new physics beyond the Standard Model. One potential accelerator facility is the High Intensity Heavy-Ion Accelerator Facility (HIAF), which is currently under construction in Huizhou City, China. Considering the projectile energy and beamline length, a high-intensity and GeV-energy muon flux could be produced and delivered by the High Energy Fragment Separator beamline of the HIAF facility. In this paper, the flux intensity and purity of muon beam based on HIAF are discussed in detail. For the $\mu^+$ beam, the highest muon yield reaches $8.2 \times 10^6 ~ \mu$/s with the purity of approximately $2\%$ at a momentum of 3.5 GeV/c; meanwhile, for the $\mu^-$ beam, the maximum muon yield is 4.2 $\times 10^6 ~ \mu$/s with the purity of around $20\%$ at a momentum of 1.5 GeV/c. The results also indicate that, for muon beams with an energy of several GeV, by applying a suitable purification strategy, we can get a muon beam with a purity of 100\% and an intensity of the order of $10^5 ~ \mu$/s.