What is a Muon?
A muon is a fundamental particle, produced in weak radioactive decays of pions; symbol u; mass 106 MeV; charge -1; spin 1/2. It behaves like a heavy electron, but decays to an electron and neutrinos. It was discovered in 1937 by Carl Anderson in cosmic ray experiments.
What does the new version do?
-This program simulates the pion-to-muon decay channel (grey cylinders surrounding a straight blue path) of the RAL Neutrino Factory front end design. This is different to the previous versions of the solenoid-channel-only optimisation because it varies all parameters of the solenoids independently of one another. The bending chicane featured in versions 4.0-4.2x will be replaced by a linear accelerator and a muon 'cooling ring' in version 5.
What does the Project hope to Achieve?
The experiment is called the Neutrino Factory, scheduled for construction some time around 2015. Its primary aim is to fire beams of neutrinos (fundamental particles) through the Earth's interior to detector stations on different continents. They're doing this to measure whether they change type en route (there are 3 types of neutrino) and data from this in turn will allow them to determine the neutrino's mass (and whether it even has mass).
The reason they want to do this is that the neutrino is just about the most common particle in the universe (billions pass through your body every second) and if it has mass, this could cause the universe to eventually recollapse on itself. Knowing the mass will also allow scientists to make better models of how the universe began.
Actually the machine that's being built (costing at least $1.9bn) has several scientific aims. The neutrinos are used for fundamental physics experiments, but the proton beam that is produced at the start (this hits the target rod at the beginning of the simulation you download) is also going to be used in experiments for neutralising radioactive waste by transmuting the radioactive elements into stable ones.
What is the Reason for my Input?
You are simulating the part of the process where the protons hit a target rod and cause pions to be emitted, which decay into muons, which then proceed to a storage ring and decay into electrons and neutrinos. This is a fairly critical part of the apparatus, which catches the pions and confines some of them into a beam while they decay into muons. The efficiency of this dictates that of the entire machine. If the R&D says it isn't efficient enough it may not get funded to be built, but users of this program have already doubled the estimated efficiency, so it probably will.
How do I get Started?
To get started simply follow the guide in the Join Muon section of this website.
For more information on the project and current developments head over to www.stephenbrooks.org
How long do the work units take to process?
The time taken to process work units varies with the amount of particles and the parcentage of particles transferred. The results.dat file conaints all completed results you have computed. As you progress your percentage transfered (muon yield) will slightly increase. The larger the percentage transferred the more time the work units will take. As your work units increase you will recieve larger Mpts per work unit. Like most distributed computing projects Athlon XP processors are faster than the Pentium 4s. It will work fine on any system though due to the no time limit factor.
Are there any downloads or time limits for the work units?
No, there is no download of work units or time limit. The client produces its own work units using the results.dat file. By using the Best 250 file better results can be obtained.
How do I send my results?
If the computer is connected to the internet permenately then use the auto send feature, which will automaticaly send the results aftert he results.txt file grows larger than 100kb (about 99 or 100 results).
If the computer is on a limited internet basis then use the manual send feature when online.
If the computer has no internet access copy the results.txt file to a computer with interent access and send it using the manual send feature. (Warning! do not overwrite the other results.txt file)
How is work unit's score calculated? (see below for v4.3 and above)
Here is the how the score is allocated for each work unit:
score = No of particles if less than 1% transfer
score = No of particles * 5 * floor(transfer %) if more than 1%
floor(x) = x rounded down to next integer
What does the unit Mpts stands for?
-Mpts stands for Mega-particle-timesteps. In other words it is the number of times the simulation has had to shift a particle forward one timestep, divided by 10^6.
How do I join a team?
To join a team simply put their tag before or after your name and and you will be added to the team. For example to join the Free-DC.org team put '[Free-DC.org]' after your name (ie magnav0x[Free-DC.org]). Your username can be edited/changed at any time in the User.txt file.
How often are the stats updated?
The stats are updated approximately every 2 hours.
Official stats are located at:
http://www.stephenbrooks.org/muon1/v...hide=1&teams=1
Other stats are at:
http://www.stephenbrooks.org/muon1/ (scroll to the bottom)
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