Muon storage rings—neutrino factories

Abstract

The concept of a muon storage ring based Neutrino Source (Neutrino Factory) has sparked considerable interest in the High Energy Physics community. Besides providing a first phase of a muon collider facility, it would generate more intense and well collimated neutrino beams than currently available. The BNL-AGS or some other proton driver would provide an intense proton beam that hits a target, produces pions that decay into muons. The muons must be cooled, accelerated and injected into a storage ring with a long straight section where they decay. The decays occurring in the straight sections of the ring would generate neutrino beams that could be directed to detectors located thousands of kilometers away, allowing studies of neutrino oscillations with precisions not currently accessible. For example, with the neutrino source at BNL, detectors at Soudan, Minnesota (1715 km), and Gran Sasso, Italy (6527 km) become very interesting possibilities. The feasibility of constructing and operating such a muon-storage-ring based Neutrino-Factory, including geotechnical questions related to building non-planar storage rings (e.g. at 8° angle for BNL-Soudan, and 31° angle for BNL-Gran Sasso) along with the design of the muon capture, cooling, acceleration, and storage ring for such a facility is being explored by our growing Neutrino Factory and Muon Collider Collaboration (NFMCC). We present overview of Neutrino Factory concept based on a muon storage ring, its components, physics opportunities, Possible upgrade to a full muon collider, latest simulations of front-end, and a new bowtie-muon storage ring design.