Muon Collider

Muon storage ring source in which energetic pions are injected into a ring, decay to produce muons captured within the ring, which in turn decay to neutrino beam. This idea was proposed several times, but has the basic problem that the neutrino beam intensity is low. The current and modern idea: Muons are created from an intense pion source at low energies, their phase space compressed to produce a bright beam which is then accelerated to the desired energy and injected into a storage ring with long straight sections pointing in the desired direction. This can produce very high intensity neutrino beams.

The main goal of the Muon Accelerator Program (MAP) was to assess the feasibility and potential of high energy high luminosity muon colliders operating at a center-of-mass energy in the range 100 GeV - 4 TeV. The high intensity muon source needed for muon colliders can also be used to feed a muon storage ring neutrino source (neutrino factory). Neutrino factories provide a possible path towards a muon collider. Currently Muon Accelerator Program consists of more than 130 scientists and engineers from 30 institutions around the world.

Within the Muon Accelerator Program, the University of Mississippi made a major contribution to the collaboration. Prof. Summers served on the Muon Accelerator Program executive board. Prof. Summers, Prof. Cremaldi, Dr. Godang and Mr. Bracker made a significant contribution in the Neutrino Factory and Muon Collider R&D.

COOL 05 Conference (HTML) (Group Photo)

Muon Ring Cooler Workshop — March 2004