TIME STRUCTURE OF PARTICLE PRODUCTION IN THE MERIT HIGH-POWER TARGET EXPERIMENT

The MERIT experiment is a proof-of-principle test of a target system for high power proton beam to be used as front-end for a neutrino factory complex or a muon collider. The experiment took data in autumn 2007 with the fast ex- tracted beam from the CERN Proton Synchrotron (PS) to a maximum intensity of about 30 × 1012 protons per pulse. We report results from the portion of the MERIT experi- ment in which separated beam pulses were delivered to a free mercury jet target with time intervals between pulses varying from 2 to 700 µs. The analysis is based on the re- sponses of particle detectors placed along side and down- stream of the target.