Muon accelerators seemed like a distant dream. They will soon become a reality.

These elementary particles exhibit many of the typical properties of electrons, although they are much larger. They are a component of secondary cosmic radiation, and their secrets are quickly becoming easier to learn than ever before. Many thanks to the MICE team members who presented their idea on the following pages. Physics of nature.

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Accelerators, led by the Large Hadron Collider, work by accelerating particles to incredible speeds. When the two collide, that’s where all the magic happens. By analyzing the data collected from these collisions, scientists can better understand the laws that govern the building blocks of matter and unlock the secrets of the forces that drive what happens in the universe.

Naturally, the implementation of such projects, i.e. the construction of accelerators, is not an easy task, and above all, a cheap one. Moreover, such devices take up a huge amount of space, which is best illustrated by the example of the Large Hadron Collider. However, physicists point out that using muons instead of ions, protons and electrons can not only reduce the costs of building such machines, but also reduce their size.

Muon accelerators could facilitate research into the laws governing the universe.

The problem was that it was difficult to use muons in beam form. Ionization cooling was expected to be a breakthrough in this regard. By lowering the temperature, the muons could be more easily controlled, slowing their decay, which under normal circumstances occurs just 2.2 microseconds after the particles are formed. However, cooling meant they could remain in beam form for much longer.

New successes have been added to the previous successes achieved by the MICE team. This is thanks to research into the shape of the beam, which showed that cooling reduces the area occupied by the beam. The ionization cooling technology promises to be a major advance. This was confirmed by experiments conducted by its authors on a small scale, but they were very confident that scaling it up would give great results.

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In this way, what until recently seemed completely impossible could soon become a reality. The stakes are high, as physicists predict that a muon accelerator could provide up to 10 times more discoveries than the Large Hadron Collider. And all this at a lower energy and financial cost. While this sounds very encouraging in theory, the facts remain unchanged. So far, the proposed solutions only work in theory or on a small scale. But if an efficient muon cooling system could be created, it would be a huge step towards building a large-scale accelerator.