THE PRIMARY TARGET FACILITY FOR A NEUTRINO FACTORY BASED ON MUON BEAMS.

Neutrino beams from the decay of muons in a storage ring offer the prospect of very high flux, well-understood spectra, and equal numbers of electron and muon neutrinos, as desirable for detailed exploration of neutrino oscillations via long baseline detectors [1]. Such beams require. large numbers of muons, and hence a high performance target station at which a 1-4 MW proton beam of 16-24 GeV impinges on a compact target, all inside a high field solenoid channel to capture as much of the phase volume of soft pions as possible. A first concept was based on a carbon target, as reported in 2000 the Neutrino Factory Study-I [2]. A higher performance option based on a free mercury jet has been studied in 2001 as part of the Neutrino Factory Feasibility Study-II [3,4]. An overview of a mercury jet target facility is presented here, including requirements, design concept and summaries of simulated performance. Further details are presented in related papers at this conference