Mice: The International Muon Ionisation Cooling Experiment

Muon storage rings have been proposed for use as sources of intense high-energy neutrino beams and as the basis for multi-TeV lepton-antilepton colliding beam facilities. To optimise the performance of such facilities is likely to require the phase-space compression (cooling) of the muon beam prior to acceleration and storage. The short muon-lifetime makes it impossible to employ traditional techniques to cool the beam while maintaining the muon-beam intensity. Ionisation cooling, a process in which the muon beam is passed through a series of liquid hydrogen absorbers followed by accelerating RF-cavities, is the technique proposed to cool the muon beam. The international Muon Ionisation Cooling Experiment (MICE) collaboration has been formed to carry out a muon-cooling demonstration experiment, and its proposal to Rutherford Appleton Laboratory has been approved. The MICE cooling channel, the instrumentation and the implementation at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory is described together with the predicted performance of the channel and the measurements that will be made.