The International Muon Ionization Cooling Experiment (MICE)

Ionization cooling of muons has an important factor both for the performance and for the cost of a Neutrino Factory based on a muon storage ring, however it has never been demonstrated in practice. The aims of the international Muon Ionization Cooling Experiment (MICE), proposed to Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, are to show feasibility of a cooling channel giving the desired performance for a Neutrino Factory and investigate the limits and practicality of cooling. The cooling channel assembles liquid-hydrogen absorbers providing energy loss and high-gradient radio frequency cavities to re-accelerate the particles. It reduces the beam transverse emittance by >10% for muon momenta between 140 and 240 MeV/c. The kinematics of muons are measured with particle detectors particle-by-particle to calculate the beam emittance precisely. Spectrometers placed before and after the cooling section perform the measurements of beam transmission and emittance reduction with an absolute precision of ± 0.1%.