Ultra Slow Muon Project at J-PARC, MUSE

The muon science facility (MUSE), along with the neutron, hadron, and neutrino facilities, is one of the experimental areas of the J-PARC project, which was approved for construction at the Tokai JAEA site. The MUSE facility is located in the Materials and Life Science Facility (MLF), which is a building integrated to include both neutron and muon science programs. Construction of the MLF building was started in the beginning of 2004, and first muon beam is expected in the autumn of 2008.As a next step, we are planning to install, a Super Omega muon channel with a large acceptance of 400 msr, to extract the world strongest pulsed surface muon beam. Its goal is to extract 4x108 surface muons/s for the generation of the intense ultra slow muons, utilizing laser resonant ionization of Mu by applying an intense pulsed VUV laser system. As maximum 1x106 ultra slow muons/s will be expected, which will allow for the extension of μSR into the field of thin film and surface science.