Parametric-resonance ionization cooling of muon beams
Parametric-resonance Ionization Cooling (PIC) is proposed as the final 6D cooling stage of a high-luminosity muon collider. Combining muon ionization cooling with parametric resonant dynamics should allow an order of magnitude smaller final equilibrium transverse beam emittances than conventional ionization cooling alone. In this scheme, a half-integer parametric resonance is induced in a cooling channel causing the beam to be naturally focused with the period of the channel's free oscillations. Thin absorbers placed at the focal points then cool the beam's angular divergence through the usual ionization cooling mechanism where each absorber is followed by RF cavities. A special continuous-field twin-helix magnetic channel with correlated behavior of the horizontal and vertical betatron motions and dispersion was developed for PIC. We present the results of modeling PIC in such a channel using GEANT4/G4beamline. We discuss the challenge of precise beam aberration control from one absorber to another over a wide angular spread.