Sketching Out a Muon Collider

cerncourier.com

The article says muons decay in 2.2 microseconds, but muons traveling at > 0.99c live significantly longer due to relativity.

It's pretty surprising the article doesn't mention time dilation at all, seems like it would be a pretty important effect for anyone trying to design a muon accelerator.

Is there a way to create muons already traveling at relativistic velocity, or do you have to generate muons at rest and then accelerate them to >0.99c within a few microseconds?

The article mentions designs where the muons can circulate 2000 times, so I think this publication is assuming some conceptual knowledge on the part of the reader.

Muons are generally produced by hitting a target with a beam of something else, so they will not be born at rest. The problem is that making a beam this way is somewhat "splattery" and the resulting components of velocity will not be 100% down the beam path. These perpendicular components need to be removed as much as possible, a task which is referred to as "cooling". Muon cooling is still in its infancy. My friend did his PhD on the project mentioned in this article: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00212-3

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