Moderation of positive muons by helium gas

Efficiently creating beams of spin-polarized positive muons with energies between eV and keV (so-called slow muon beams) is important for further development and application of muon spin rotation, relaxation, and resonance techniques. One existing moderation method involves the use of wide-band-gap materials as moderators such as rare gas solids and solid nitrogen thin films (band-gap energy between 11 eV and 22 eV). Based on this moderation method, we have studied the use of helium gas as a moderator, with the goal of producing the slow muon beam more efficiently. Because of helium's high (24:6 eV) ionization energy and because the cross section for muonium formation is suppressed in helium gas, we expect the production of slow muons using helium gas to be highly efficient.