  Muon storage rings have been proposed for use as a source of high-energy
neutrino beams (the Neutrino Factory) and as the basis for a high-energy
lepton-antilepton collider (the Muon Collider). The Neutrino Factory is widely
believed to be the machine of choice for the search for leptonic CP violation
while the Muon Collider may prove to be the most practical route to multi-TeV
lepton-antilepton collisions. The baseline conceptual designs for each of these
facilities requires the phase-space compression (cooling) of the muon beams
prior to acceleration. The short muon lifetime makes it impossible to employ
traditional techniques to cool the beam while maintaining the muon-beam
intensity. Ionization cooling, a process in which the muon beam is passed
through a series of liquid-hydrogen absorbers followed by accelerating RF
cavities, is the technique proposed to cool the muon beam. The international
Muon Ionization Cooling Experiment (MICE) collaboration will carry out a
systematic study of ionization cooling. The MICE experiment, which is under
construction at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, will begin to take data
late this year. The MICE cooling channel, the instrumentation and the
implementation at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory are described together
with the predicted performance of the channel and the measurements that will be
made.
