Neutrinos from stored muon beams: the MICE experiment and the way forward
K. Long, Imperial College London
The study of the neutrino is the study of physics beyond the Standard Model. Now that θ13 has been measured, the focus of the long-baseline neutrino-oscillation programme is to determine the mass hierarchy and to search for leptonic CP-invariance violation. Facilities in which stored muon beams are used to provide intense neutrino beams of precisely known composition and flux have the potential to revolutionise the field. I will explain how the process of ionization cooling can be used to reduce the muon-beam phase space, increasing the intensity of the Neutrino Factory muon beam by a factor of two. To unlock the potential of stored muon beams for particle physics requires the demonstration of ionization cooling with the international Muon Ionization Cooling Experiment (MICE). I will describe the status of MICE and how MICE fits within a programme of incremental development that has the potential,in the short term, to serve the conventional long-baseline programme and provide definitive measurements of short-baseline oscillations and, in the medium term, be developed to deliver the Neutrino Factory and, in the long term, the Muon Collider.