A muon collider is a proposed particle accelerator facility in its conceptual design stage that collides muon beams in order to observe the results. Muons are a type of lepton that occurs only in high-energy collisions caused by cosmic rays or induced in particle accelerators.
Previous lepton colliders have all used electrons, or their anti-particles, positrons. They offer an advantage over hadron colliders, such as the CERN-based Large Hadron Collider, in that lepton collisions are relatively "clean." Leptons are considered elementary particles, while hadrons, such as protons, are composite particles.
While being an elementary particle with low mass, like other leptons, a muon has a rest mass that is higher by a factor of approximately 200 than that of electrons. Thus, synchrotron radiation emitted from a muon is a factor of roughly 109 less than from an electron. The reduced radiation loss enables the construction of circular colliders with much higher design energies than equivalent electron / positron colliders. This permits high energies to be achieved while maintaining a clean collision environment. It has been shown that a muon collider could achieve energies in the teraelectronvolt range.[1]
Muons are short-living with a lifetime of 2.2 μs in their rest frame. This is a serious challenge for a muon collider: It has to produce new muons frequently and accelerate and collide them as quickly as possible before too many muons decay. Colliders using stable particles can store them for minutes to hours.
Talks were proceeding in 2009.[2][3] The muon accelerator programme was created in 2010, so that the practical considerations for muon collision experimentation might be realized.[4][5][6][7][8] At Fermilab, a muon collider is the proposed culmination of Project X.
See also
International Muon Ionization Cooling Experiment
References
Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory Center for Beam Physics Archived 27 February 2005 at the Wayback Machine [Retrieved 2012-01-08]
Eric Hand 18 November 2009 Nature 462, 260–261 (2009) [1] doi:10.1038/462260a [Retrieved 2012-01-08]
Fermilab The U.S. Department of Energy > MUONRD indico [Retrieved 2012-01-08 (site last modified: 30 September 2011)]
MAP [Retrieved 2012-01-08 (site last modified: 22 March 2011)]
Eddy, B. Fellenz, P. Prieto, A. Semenov, D.C. Voy, M. Wendt (Fermilab) 17 Aug 2011 A Wire Position Monitor System for the 1.3 GHz TESLA-style Cryomodule at the Fermilab New-Muon-Lab Accelerator. [2] [Retrieved 2012-01-08]
6 March 2008 – The Neutrino Factory and Muon Collider Collaboration (NFMCC) pdf – 17 October 2011 [Retrieved 2012-01-08]
Yonehara, Katsuya; MTA working Group (2013). "Recent progress of RF cavity study at Mucool Test Area". Journal of Physics: Conference Series. 408 (1): 012062. arXiv:1201.5903. Bibcode:2013JPhCS.408a2062Y. doi:10.1088/1742-6596/408/1/012062.
ISIS A World centre for Neutrinos and Muons [3][Retrieved 2012-01-08]
Hellenica World - Scientific Library
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