ICOOL: a simulation code for ionization cooling of muon beams

Current ideas for designing a high luminosity muon collider require significant cooling of the phase space of the muon beams. The only known method that can cool the beams in a time comparable to the muon lifetime is ionization cooling. This method requires directing the particles in the beam at a large angle through a low Z absorber material in a strong focusing magnetic channel and then restoring the longitudinal momentum with an RF cavity. We have developed a new 3-D tracking code ICOOL for examining possible configurations for muon cooling. A cooling system is described in terms of a series of longitudinal regions with associated material and field properties. The tracking takes place in a coordinate system that follows a reference orbit through the system. The code takes into account decays and interactions of /spl sim/50-500 MeV/c muons in matter. Material geometry regions include cylinders and wedges. A number of analytic models are provided for describing the field configurations. Simple diagnostics are built into the code, including calculation of emittances and correlations, longitudinal traces, histograms and scatter plots. A number of auxiliary files can be generated for postprocessing analysis by the user.