Muon collider

A muon collider, also known as a "Higgs factory", 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 roughly 10−9 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 would need energies in the teravolt range.[1]

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

References

  1. ↑ Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory .gov/CBP_pages Center for Beam Physics [Retrieved 2012-01-08]
  2. ↑ Eric Hand 18 November 2009 Nature 462, 260–261 (2009) doi:10.1038/462260a [Retrieved 2012-01-08]
  3. ↑ Fermilab The U.S. Department of Energy > MUONRD indico [Retrieved 2012-01-08 (site last modified: 30 September 2011)]
  4. ↑ MAP [Retrieved 2012-01-08 (site last modified: 22 March 2011]
  5. ↑ 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. [Retrieved 2012-01-08]
  6. ↑ 6 March 2008 – The Neutrino Factory and Muon Collider Collaboration (NFMCC) pdf – 17 October 2011 [Retrieved 2012-01-08]
  7. ↑ http://inspirehep.net/record/1079877
  8. ↑ ISIS A World centre for Neutrinos and Muons [Retrieved 2012-01-08]
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