Prospects for muon acceleration in plasma based accelerators

Muon colliders are being currently considered as a next step for HEP. Since muons, as electrons, are fundamental particles, their full energy is available in collisions, in contrast to protons. Nonetheless, the finite mean lifetime of muons (2.2 μs at rest) means that the muons must be collected, cooled, and rapidly accelerated before a significant number of them decay. Plasma accelerators could in principle accelerate muons to relativistic energies much faster than traditional RF accelerators, thereby greatly reducing the loss of muons.

Here, we study the possibility of producing muons by colliding relativistic particle bunches with a dense material and study the trapping of those muons in a plasma accelerator. Muon production will be modeled using the CERN-developed toolkit GEANT4, and we model the plasma accelerator using OSIRIS PIC simulations.