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.