Particle accelerators like the famous Large Hadron Collider (LHC) reveal the origin of matter and help us understand the composition of the universe. Scientists use these giant machines to find answers related to elementary particles, dark matter, energy, antimatter, and more.
In a particle accelerator, charged particles such as protons or electrons move at very high speeds. These fast particles are then directed toward targets or toward each other. By studying the results of these collisions, scientists can learn more about the basic building blocks of matter and the forces that hold them together.
Particle accelerators, however, have several problems. For example, they are very expensive to build and require a lot of space to operate.
Interestingly, physicists have known for some time that by using muons (elementary particles similar to the electron but with a much greater mass) instead of ions, protons and electrons, particle accelerators can be made better, cheaper and smaller.
But the challenge with this approach has been identifying a practical way to use muons as a beam in a particle accelerator. A new study by researchers from the MICE collaboration finally reveals a way to do just that.
By overcoming a major challenge, they discovered a method to increase the density and localization of muons in a beam, making them easier to control and collide in a particle accelerator.
Notably, the Muon Ionization Cooling Experiment (MICE) collaboration is an international scientific project focused on the development of ionization cooling technology for muons.
Cooling muon beams makes them easy to manipulate
Although muons are heavy particles, they are very unstable and decay into electrons and neutrinos within 2.2 microseconds of their origin.
This makes it difficult to keep them together in an accelerator long enough to form a focused beam and collide. Additionally, their short lifetimes mean they need to be gathered and accelerated quickly before they disintegrate.
In their previous study, the authors learned how to arrange muons into a beam using materials that reduce the muons’ energy. They also used a magnetic lens to focus and hold the muons in the central region of the beam.
This time, they studied the shape of the beam and found that cooling a muon beam decreases the space it occupies. In addition, it also allows the muons to move in a well-aligned manner. “The volume of the phase space of the muon beam can be reduced by ionization cooling,” the authors of the study note.
They also conducted an experiment using a small accelerator prototype, showing the formation and cooling of a high-luminosity muon beam. “The clear positive result shown by our new analysis gives us the confidence to move forward with larger accelerator prototypes that put this technique into practice,” said Ken Long, one of the study’s authors and a MICE scientist.
Advantages of a muon accelerator
The MICE collaboration includes hundreds of scientists, all working together to transform muon accelerators (particle accelerators that use muons) from a theoretical concept into reality.
Indeed, muon accelerators have several advantages over conventional particle accelerators. For example, “if built, a future muon collider could offer a discovery reach ten times that of CERN’s Large Hadron Collider, even after its substantial upgrade,” according to the U.S. Department of Energy’s Fermilab.
The LHC currently has a circumference of about 27 km and will be extended to about 90 km. With a muon collider, scientists can perform high-energy collisions in a smaller space and at lower cost.
“A muon collider would be more compact and therefore cheaper, achieving effective energies as high as those offered by the 90 km proton collider in a much smaller space,” the study authors add.
However, there is no operational muon accelerator yet. The current study solves one of the main challenges in realizing this technology, but researchers still have a lot of work to do.
The next goal of the MICE team is to develop an efficient cooling system for future muon accelerators.
The study is published in the journal Physics of nature.
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