Search Results (9 total)

The design of a low-energy (4 GeV) neutrino factory (NF) is described, along with its expected performance. The neutrino factory uses a high-energy proton beam to produce charged pions. The π^± decay to produce muons (μ^±), which are collected, accelerated, and stored in a ring with long straight sections. Muons decaying in the straight sections produce neutrino beams. The scheme is based on previous designs for higher energy neutrino factories, but has an improved bunching and phase rotation system, and new acceleration, storage ring, and detector schemes tailored to the needs of the lower energy facility. Our simulations suggest that the NF scheme we describe can produce neutrino beams generated by ∼1.4×10²¹ μ⁺ per year decaying in a long straight section of the storage ring, and a similar number of μ^- decays.

There have been active efforts in the U.S., Europe, and Japan on the design of a neutrino factory. This type of facility produces intense beams of neutrinos from the decay of muons in a high-energy storage ring. In the U.S., a second detailed feasibility study (FS2) for a neutrino factory was completed in 2001. Since that report was published, new ideas in bunching, cooling, and acceleration of muon beams have been developed. We have incorporated these ideas into a new facility design, which we designate as study 2B (ST2B), that should lead to significant cost savings over the FS2 design.

Commissioning of two large coherent light facilities (XFELs) at SLAC and DESY should begin in 2008 and 2011, respectively. In this paper we look further into the future, hoping to answer, in a very preliminary way, two questions. First: What will the next generation of XFEL facilities look like? Believing that superconducting technology offers advantages such as high quality beams with highly populated bunches, the possibility of energy recovery and higher overall efficiency than warm technology, we focus this preliminary study on the superconducting option. From this belief the second question arises: What modifications in superconducting technology and in the machine design are needed, as compared to the present DESY XFEL, and what kind of research and development program should be proposed to arrive in the next few years at a technically feasible solution with even higher brilliance and increased overall conversion of ac power to photon beam power? In this paper we will very often refer to and profit from the DESY XFEL design, acknowledging its many technically innovative solutions.

We describe the status of our effort to realize a first neutrino factory and the progress made in understanding the problems associated with the collection and cooling of muons towards that end. We summarize the physics that can be done with neutrino factories as well as with intense cold beams of muons. The physics potential of muon colliders is reviewed, both as Higgs factories and compact high-energy lepton colliders. The status and time scale of our research and development effort is reviewed as well as the latest designs in cooling channels including the promise of ring coolers in achieving longitudinal and transverse cooling simultaneously. We detail the efforts being made to mount an international cooling experiment to demonstrate the ionization cooling of muons.

The status of the research on muon colliders is discussed and plans are outlined for future theoretical and experimental studies. Besides work on the parameters of a 3–4 and 0.5 TeV center-of-mass (COM) energy collider, many studies are now concentrating on a machine near 0.1 TeV (COM) that could be a factory for the s-channel production of Higgs particles. We discuss the research on the various components in such muon colliders, starting from the proton accelerator needed to generate pions from a heavy-Z target and proceeding through the phase rotation and decay (π→μν_μ) channel, muon cooling, acceleration, storage in a collider ring, and the collider detector. We also present theoretical and experimental R&D plans for the next several years that should lead to a better understanding of the design and feasibility issues for all of the components. This report is an update of the progress on the research and development since the feasibility study of muon colliders presented at the Snowmass '96 Workshop [R. B. Palmer, A. Sessler, and A. Tollestrup, Proceedings of the 1996 DPF/DPB Summer Study on High-Energy Physics (Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, Menlo Park, CA, 1997)].

Luminosity-driven channeling extraction has been observed for the first time using a 900 GeV circulating proton beam at the superconducting Fermilab Tevatron. The extraction efficiency was found to be about 30%. A 150 kHz beam was obtained during luminosity-driven extraction with a tolerable background rate at the collider experiments. A 900 kHz beam was obtained when the background limits were doubled. This is the highest energy at which channeling has been observed.

Coupled-bunch instabilities in a circular machine are effectively simulated using a longitudinal-phase-space tracking code (esme). Two damping schemes based on intrabunch (Landau cavity) and bunch-to-bunch synchrotron tune spread are also examined. Some comparison of the tune spread induced via these schemes (as a measure of introduced Landau damping) is done in both cases. Finally, a simulation of active damping of the coupled-bunch instability through radial-position feedback is explored as another possible cure.

A simple nonlinear model of a coasting beam coupled to a sharp storage-ring impedance is formulated in the framework of the quasilinear Vlasov equation. Nonperturbative analytic treatment of the Vlasov equation allows us to study time evolution of a single coherent mode (an azimuthal harmonic of the density driven by the impedance) and the overall uniform-density distribution function. In the case of a Gaussian beam, this formalism simplifies to a pair of equations of motion which together with the dispersion relation fully describe the dynamics of the beam. Further numerical treatment reveals saturation of the mode growth which simultaneously provides a stabilizing mechanism (via Landau damping) for the overall distribution function. Some predictions about the energy overshoot and coherent-instability lifetime are made on the basis of the presented formalism.

A simple technique is proposed for probing the single-particle and collective excitations in a Fermi liquid via a standing magnetic surface wave of arbitrary ω and fixed k generated by a meanderline coil. The calculated power absorption spectrum for ³He displays singularities associated with the l=0 spin-wave mode and a Doppler-shifted spin resonance of the single-particle excitations.