Muon cooling research and development

The MuCool Collaboration is engaged in a program of research and development on hardware for ionization cooling of a muon beam. The aim of MuCool is to develop the key pieces, including high-gradient normal-conducting RF cavities and high-power liquid-hydrogen energy absorbers. This effort will lead to a more detailed understanding of the construction and operating costs of such hardware, as well as to optimized designs that can be used to build a Neutrino Factory or Muon Collider. This work is being undertaken by a broad collaboration including accelerator and particle physicists and engineers from many national laboratories and universities in the U.S. and abroad. The intended schedule of work will lead to ionization cooling being well enough established that a construction decision for a Neutrino Factory could be taken before the end of this decade based on solid technical foundations.