Recirculating linac muon accelerator for neutrino factory

A conceptual design of a muon acceleration scheme based on recirculating superconducting linacs is proposed. In the presented scenario, acceleration starts after ionization cooling at 2 10 MeV/c and proceeds to 20 GeV, where the beam is injected into a neutrino factory storage ring. The key technical issues are addressed, such as the choice of acceleration technology (superconducting versus normal conducting) and the choice of RF frequency, and finally, implementation of the overall acceleration scheme: capture, acceleration, transport and preservation of large phase space of fast decaying species. Beam transport issues for large-momentum-spread beams are accommodated by appropriate lattice design choices. The proposed arc optics is further optimized with a sextupole correction to suppress chromatic effects contributing to emittance dilution. The presented proof-of-principle design of the arc optics with horizontal separation of multipass beams is extended for all passes. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.