A new analysis of a muon-beam experiment has successfully demonstrated one of the key technologies required for muon accelerators, marking a significant step towards the development of next-generation particle accelerators.
The study, led by Dr. Paul Bogdan Jurj from the Department of Physics at Imperial College London, has paved the way for scaling up muon colliders more quickly compared to other types of particle accelerators. Dr. Jurj stated, “Our proof-of-principle is great news for the international particle physics community, who are making plans for the next generation of higher-energy accelerators. It is an important development towards the realization of a muon collider, which could fit into existing sites, such as Fermilab in the United States, where there is a growing enthusiasm for the technology.”
Achieving High-Energy Collisions
The world’s most powerful particle accelerators, such as the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), collide protons at high energies to produce new subatomic particles for study. To achieve even higher-energy collisions and access new physics discoveries, a much larger proton collider would be needed. However, the significant costs and lengthy construction times have led some physicists to explore alternatives, including muon colliders.
Muon accelerators offer a more compact and cost-effective solution, achieving effective energies comparable to those proposed by a 100km proton collider in a much smaller space. Despite their potential, technological advancements are necessary to ensure frequent muon collisions.
Successfully Shifting Muons
One of the main challenges has been to congregate muons into a sufficiently small space to form a concentrated beam. This concentration is essential for ensuring effective collisions with an opposing muon beam. The MICE (Muon Ionization Cooling Experiment) collaboration previously achieved this by using magnetic lenses and energy-absorbing materials to ‘cool’ the muons, shifting them towards the center of the beam.
The recent analysis of the MICE experiment has provided a detailed look at the beam’s shape and spatial occupation, confirming that the cooling process made the beam more ‘perfect’ with reduced size and more organized muon travel.
Next Steps
The experiment was conducted using the MICE muon beamline at the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) ISIS Neutron and Muon Beam facility at the STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in the UK. The team is now collaborating with the International Muon Collider Collaboration to build the next stage of demonstrations.
Professor Ken Long, spokesperson for the MICE Collaboration, expressed confidence in moving forward: “The clear positive result shown by our new analysis gives us the confidence to go ahead with larger prototype accelerators that put the technique into practice.”
Dr. Chris Rogers, based at STFC’s ISIS facility in Oxfordshire, led the MICE analysis team and is now spearheading the development of the muon cooling system for the Muon Collider at CERN. He emphasized the importance of scaling up: “This is an important result that shows the MICE cooling performance in the clearest possible way. It is now imperative that we scale up to the next step, the Muon Cooling Demonstrator, in order to deliver the muon collider as soon as possible.”
This advancement in muon-beam technology represents a significant milestone in the pursuit of more efficient and powerful particle accelerators, potentially revolutionizing our understanding of fundamental physics.
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