J-PARC muon facility, MUSE

Abstract

The muon science facility (MUSE, abbreviation of MUon Science Establishment), along with the neutron, hadron, and neutrino facilities, is one of the experimental areas of the J-PARC project, which was approved for construction in a period from 2001 to 2008. The MUSE facility is located in the Materials and Life Science Facility (MLF), which is a building integrated to include both neutron and muon science programs. Construction of the MLF building was started in the beginning of 2004, and was completed at the end of the 2006 fiscal year. For Phase 1, we managed to install one super-conducting decay/surface muon channel with a modest-acceptance (about 45 mSr) pion injector in the summer of 2008. Finally, on September 19th, 2008, the 20 mm thick edge-cooled, non-rotating graphite target, which is surrounded by a copper frame, was, for the first time, placed into the 3GeV proton beam obtained from the rapid cycling synchrotron (RCS). The nuclear reactions between the 3 GeV proton beam and the nucleus of carbon produce both positively (π+) and negatively (π−) charged pions. On September 26th, 2008, we finally succeeded to extract? surface muons (μ+), which are obtained from the decay of π+ near the surface of the pion production target in the proton beam line. First, we commissioned the secondary muon beam line optics by tuning the superconducting magnet, the quadrupole and bending magnets, and the DC separator in order to optimize the transport of the surface muon beam and to eliminate the e+ contamination. Then, on December 25th, 2008, we also succeeded in the extraction of the "decay muons (μ+/μ-)", which are obtained through the in-flight decay of π+/π−