Proton Synchrotron Division

Neutrino Factory (NuFact) Project

In close collaboration with other European, American and Japanese labs the NFWG is elaborating a possible scenario for a neutrino factory located at CERN. The first part of a neutrino factory is the "proton driver" which, in order to provide an intensity of 1021 neutrinos/year, should deliver a beam power of about 4 MW. The present CERN scheme is using a linear accelerator (SPL) with a beam energy of 2.2 GeV. Its beam is injected into an accumulator and subsequently into a compressor ring to produce the necessary short bunch lengths of the order of nanoseconds. These bunches will be sent onto a target to produce short pion bunches decaying into muons which are captured and reduced in energy spread and in transverse emittance. Further acceleration of the muons to 2 GeV is performed in a special linac, followed by two Recirculating Linacs to an energy of 50 GeV. The muons are then injected into a storage ring where they are kept for the duration of the useful beam lifetime (1.2 ms at this energy). The muons decaying in the long straight sections produce the required neutrino beams. Detailed study work is going on in particular for questions concerning the target, ionisation cooling and beam dynamics.