• A.J. Dobbs, M. Apollonio, K.R. Long, J. Pasternak
  Imperial College of Science and Technology, Department of Physics, London
• D.J. Adams
  STFC/RAL/ISIS, Chilton, Didcot, Oxon

The international Muon Ionisation Cooling Experiment (MICE) is designed to provide a proof of principal of the ionisation cooling technique proposed to reduce the muon beam phase space at a future Neutrino Factory or Muon Collider. The pion production target is a titanium cylinder that is dipped into the proton beam of the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory's ISIS 800 MeV synchrotron. Studies of the particle rate in the MICE muon beam are presented as a function of the beam loss induced in ISIS by the MICE target. The implications of the observed beam loss and particle rate on ISIS operation and MICE data taking is discussed.

• L. Coney
  UCR, Riverside, California
• A.J. Dobbs
  Imperial College of Science and Technology, Department of Physics, London
• Y. Karadzhov
  Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski, Faculty of Physics, Sofia

The Muon Ionization Cooling Experiment (MICE) is being built at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) to test ionization cooling of a muon beam. Successful demonstration of cooling is a necessary step along the path toward creating future high intensity muon beams in either a Neutrino Factory or Muon Collider. Production of particles in the MICE beamline begins with a titanium target dipping into the ISIS proton beam. The resulting pions are captured, momentum-selected, and fed into a 5T superconducting decay solenoid which contains the pions and their decay muons. Another dipole then selects the final particles for propagation through the rest of the MICE beamline. Within the last year, the MICE target has been redesigned, rebuilt, and has begun operating in ISIS. The decay solenoid has also become operational, dramatically increasing the number of particles in the MICE beamline. In parallel, particle identification detectors have also been installed and commissioned. In this paper, the commissioning of the improved MICE beamline and target will be discussed, including the use of Time-of-Flight detectors to understand the content of the MICE beam between 200 and 444 MeV/c.