ParticleProductionintheMICEBeamLine.docVIP

Particle Production in the MICE Beam Line* J.S. Graulich#, Université de Genève, Geneva, Switzerland, for the MICE CollaborationAbstract The MICE experiment aims at demonstrating that the performances of the muon ionization technique are compatible with the requirements of the neutrino factory and the muon collider. The experiment is running at the Rutherford-Appleton Laboratory in the UK using the ISIS proton beam on a dynamic target as a muon source. New target system and muon beam line have been designed, built and installed during the last two years. In parallel, particle identification detectors needed for the experiment were installed and commissioned. This paper describes how we made use of Time of Flight detectors and aerogel Cherenkov counters to characterize the content of the MICE beam between 100 and 480 MeV/c. Figure 1: Schematic of the MICE beam line at ISIS, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, UK Introduction The MICE experiment [1] is part of the RD programme towards a neutrino factory broadly considered as the most precise option to probe neutrino physics in the future. In a neutrino factory an intense neutrino beam is produced from a high energy muon storage ring. The cooling of muon beam is essentially unexplored and is a major source of uncertainty on the cost and construction time of a neutrino factory. MICE has been designed to demonstrate that it is possible to engineer, build and operate safely and reliably a realistic section of linear muon ionization cooling channel similar to the one proposed in the US Feasibility Studies [2]. The experiment consists in placing one cell of a solenoidal cooling channel lattice in between two spectrometers measuring precisely the emittance of upstream and downstream beams. Such a setup allows direct measurement of the cooling performances in various operation modes and muon beam conditions. Moreover, detailed comparison with simulations will also provide a validated design tool for future optimization of a Ne