Muon Collider Studies

The next generation of particle collider facilities are expected to be expensive and power hungry. The muon collider is proposed as an option, complementary to other proposed facilities, that is expected to be competitive in terms of physics reach, at a more affordable scale in terms of size, cost and power requirements. In the muon collider a high-acceptance linac is required that will capture the huge phase space volume of the positively and negatively charged muons arising from protons impinging on a target.

A pair of approximately 1 km linacs, one for each sign, will then cool the muon beam in order to provide the luminosity required for a satisfactory physics performance. The beam is then accelerated, first in a linac and then in a series of circular accelerators.

A 42 month PhD studentship will investigate surface and breakdown physics in cavities relevant for the acceleration of muons in the presence of a strong axial guide magnetic field. The PhD student will be part of a wider muon capture and cooling activity at the Rutherford Appleton and Daresbury Laboratory UK and CERN, Switzerland including beam clean-up, transverse and longitudinal capture, ionisation in very high-field straight solenoids.

Muon ionisation cooling in both transverse and longitudinal phase space and at the small emittance required for the muon collider will be studied.