The role of superconductivity and cryogenics in the neutrino factory

The proposed neutrino factory will produce a defined beam of neutrinos from the decay of muons in a storage ring[1,2,3]. The storage ring will be oriented so that the neutrinos can be detected at one or more detectors several thousand kilometers from the storage ring. This report presents an overview of the proposed neutrino factory and its subsystems that use cryogenics. Superconducting magnets will be used in the following ways in the neutrino factory; 1) the outsert solenoid for the 20 T pion capture system, 2) the decay channel where pions decay to muons, 3) the muon phase rotation system, 4) the muon cooling system, 5) focusing during the first stage of muon acceleration, 6) bending and focusing magnets in the re-circulating linac accelerator and 7) bending and focusing magnets in the muon storage ring where the neutrino beams are generated. Low temperature superconducting RF cavities will be used to accelerate the muons from about 200 MeV to 20 GeV. The muon cooling system uses liquid hydrogen absorbers at 20 K to reduce the emittance of the muon beam before it is accelerated to full energy.