Figure of merit for muon cooling—an algorithm for particle counting in coupled phase planes

A method to count particles in hyper-ellipsoidal phase space volumes was developed to be used as a figure of merit for a muon cooling experiment and as a measure for the cooling performance of a neutrino factory cooling channel. The cooling rate in four and six dimensions can be measured in the presence of coupling between phase space planes. The algorithm was demonstrated on simulations of the cooling experiment.