Paper detail

Low emittance pion beams generation from bright photons and relativistic protons

Present availability of high brilliance photon beams as those produced by X-ray Free Electron Lasers in combination with intense TeV proton beams typical of the Large Hadron Collider makes it possible to conceive the generation of pion beams via photo-production in a highly relativistic Lorentz boosted frame: the main advantage is the low emittance attainable and a TeV-class energy for the generated pions, that may be an interesting option for the production of low emittance muon and neutrino beams. We will describe the kinematics of the two classes of dominant events, i.e. the pion photo-production and the electron/positron pair production, neglecting other small cross-section possible events like Compton and muon pair production. Based on the phase space distributions of the pion and muon beams we will analyze the pion beam brightness achievable in three examples, based on advanced high efficiency high repetition rate FELs coupled to LHC or Future Circular Collider (FCC) proton beams, together with the study of a possible small scale demonstrator based on a Compton Source coupled to a Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) proton beam.