Speaker
Description
Production of high brightness muon beams is of interest for a number of applications. Surface muon beams, produced from decay of pions at rest in a target, are used for muon spin resonance measurements to probe material properties and spectroscopic analysis of muon decay products. Higher energy muons arising from cosmic rays have been used for tomography and there is interest in producing artificial muon sources for this application. Study of properties of muons such as exotic decay modes or muon spin precession may yield insight into fundamental physics that is in tension with the standard model of particle physics. Acceleration and collision of bright muon beams may enable a direct probe of the standard model, as proposed by the International Muon Collider Collaboration.
Production of muon beams is done by firing protons onto a target to produce pions, which subsequently decay to muons. The resultant muon beams are rather diffuse compared to proton or electron beams. Beam cooling has been proposed as a technique to increase beam phase space density. In this talk I will review the latest developments in ionisation cooling at ISIS, including an overview of the cooling system for the muon collider, prospects for construction of a muon cooling demonstrator and studies underway for muon cooling on the ISIS muon beam lines.
