The international Muon Ionization Cooling Experiment (MICE), which is under construction at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL), will demonstrate the principle of ionization cooling as a technique for the reduction of the phase-space volume occupied by a muon beam. Ionization cooling channels are required for the Neutrino Factory and the Muon Collider. MICE will evaluate in detail the performance of a single lattice cell of the Feasibility Study 2 cooling channel. The MICE Muon Beam has been constructed at the ISIS synchrotron at RAL, and in MICE Step I, it has been characterized using the MICE beam-instrumentation system. In this paper, the MICE Muon Beam and beam-line instrumentation are described. The muon rate is presented as a function of the beam loss generated by the MICE target dipping into the ISIS proton beam. For a 1 V signal from the ISIS beam-loss monitors downstream of our target we obtain a 30 KHz instantaneous muon rate, with a neglible pion contamination in the beam.

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The two keto tautomers of phenol (1), cyclohexa-2,4-dienone (2) and cyclohexa-2,5-dienone (3), were generated by flash photolysis of appropriate precursors in aqueous solution, and the pH-rate profiles of their enolization reactions, 2 –> 1 and 3 –> 1, were measured. The rates of the reverse reactions, 1 –> 2 and 1 –> 3, were determined from the rates of acid-catalyzed hydron exchange at the ortho- and para-positions of 1; the magnitude of the kinetic isotope effect was assessed by comparing the rates of hydrogenation of phenol-2t and -2d. The ratios of the enolization and ketonization rate constants provide the equilibrium constants of enolization, pKE(2, aq, 25°C) = -12.73 ± 0.12 and pKE(3, aq, 25°C) = -10.98 ± 0.15. Combination with the acidity constant of phenol also defines the acidity constants of 2 and 3 through a thermodynamic cycle. These ketones are remarkably strong carbon acids: pKa(2) = -2.89 ± 0.12 and pKa(3) = -1.14 ± 0.15. They disappear by proton transfer to the solvent with lifetimes, τ(2) = 260 μs and τ(3) = 13 ms, that are insensitive to pH in the range from 3-10.Key words: proton transfer, tautomers, flash photolysis, kinetic isotope effect, pH-rate profiles.

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A novel single-particle technique to measure emittance has been developed and used to characterise seventeen different muon beams for the Muon Ionisation Cooling Experiment (MICE). The muon beams, whose mean momenta vary from 171 to 281 MeV/c, have emittances of approximately 1.2-2.3 π mm-rad horizontally and 0.6-1.0 π mm-rad vertically, a horizontal dispersion of 90-190 mm and momentum spreads of about 25 MeV/c. There is reasonable agreement between the measured parameters of the beams and the results of simulations. The beams are found to meet the requirements of MICE.

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