• C.T. Rogers
  STFC/RAL/ASTeC, Chilton, Didcot, Oxon
• A. Alekou
  Imperial College of Science and Technology, Department of Physics, London
• M. Martini, G. Prior
  CERN, Geneva
• D.V. Neuffer
  Fermilab, Batavia
• D. Stratakis
  BNL, Upton, Long Island, New York
• C. Y. Yoshikawa
  Muons, Inc, Batavia
• M.S. Zisman
  LBNL, Berkeley, California

We discuss alternative designs of the muon capture front end of the Neutrino Factory International Design Study (IDS). In the front end, a proton bunch on a target creates secondary pions that drift into a capture channel, decaying into muons. A sequence of RF cavities forms the resulting muon beams into strings of bunches of differing energies, aligns the bunches to (nearly) equal central energies, and initiates ionization cooling. This design is affected by limitations on accelerating gradients within magnetic fields. The effects of gradient limitations are explored, and mitigation strategies are presented.

• A.D. Bross, M. Chung, A. Jansson, A. Moretti, K. Yonehara
  Fermilab, Batavia
• D. Huang, Y. Torun
  IIT, Chicago, Illinois
• D. Li
  LBNL, Berkeley, California
• J. Norem
  ANL, Argonne
• R. B. Palmer, D. Stratakis
  BNL, Upton, Long Island, New York
• R.A. Rimmer
  JLAB, Newport News, Virginia

TThe MuCool RF Program focuses on the study of normal conducting RF structures operating in high magnetic field for applications in muon ionization cooling for Neutrino Factories and Muon Colliders. This paper will give an overview of the program, which will include a description of the test facility and its capabilities, the current test program, and the status of a cavity that can be rotated in the magnetic field which allows for a more detailed study of the maximum stable operating gradient vs. magnetic field strength and angle.