The MICE Demonstration of Muon Ionization Cooling

Muonbeams of low emittance provide the basis for the intense, well-characterised neutrino beams necessary to elucidate the physics of flavour at the Neutrino Factoryand to provide lepton-antilepton collisions up to several TeV at the Muon Collider. The international Muon Ionization Cooling Experiment(MICE) will demonstrate muon ionization cooling, the technique proposed to reduce the phase-space volume occupied by the muonbeam at such facilities. In an ionization-coolingchannel, the muonbeam traverses a material (the absorber) loosing energy, which is replaced using RF cavities. The combined effect is to reduce the transverse emittance of the beam (transverse cooling). The configuration of MICE required to deliver the demonstration of ionization coolingis being prepared in parallel to the execution of a programme designed to measure the cooling properties of liquid-hydrogenand lithium hydride. The design of the cooling-demonstration experiment will be presented together with a summary of the performance of each of its components and the cooling performance of the experiment.