Dear Fermilab Colleague,
I would like to ask you to participate in a
physics study of a neutrino
factory at Fermilab. The Lab is very interested
in assessing a muon storage
ring/ nu factory as a possible project over the
next decade. The nu factory
would establish new and exciting physics
opportunities at the Lab while
providing a natural path to a multi-TeV muon
collider. This physics study
is expected to be completed in six
months. A parallel technical design
study, being led by Norbert
Holtkamp, will produce a companion document on a
"strawman" machine
design on the same timescale. With these two studies,
the Lab can make
a judgement on bringing the nu-factory project into the Lab
program and
establishing the necessary R&D and design work needed for the
next
step.
The initial Fermilab members that is being asked to start the study
group are: Bob Bernstein, Steve Geer, Debbie Harris, Stephen Parke,
Rajendran Raja, Heidi Schellman, and Panagiotis Spentzouris. Heidi
Schellman and Steve Geer will act as co-coordinators for the study. It is
expected that other people will join this study group over the course of the
study and that the local Fermilab group will interact with members of the
broader Nu-factory/Muon-collider Collaboration and the community to deepen and
augment the
study.
Sincerely,
Mike Shaevitz
The charge for the group will be to deliver a concise report by March
31,
2000 that will explicitly include:
1. The physics motivation for a
neutrino source based
on a muon storage ring, operating in
the era
beyond the current set of neutrino
oscillation
experiments.
2. The physics program
that could be accomplished at a
neutrino factory as a
function of:
(a) The stored muon energy, with the
maximum energy
taken to be 50
GeV.
(b) The number of muon decays per year in the
beam-forming
straight section,
taken to be in the range from
10^19
to 10^21 decays per
year.
(c) The presence or absence of muon polarization
within the
storage
ring.
(d) For oscillation experiments, the baseline
length including
investigations evaluating matter effects.