On March 24, 2009, the Institute of Materials Structure Science, IMSS, at KEK hosted a review session for Muon Science Laboratory user programs operated in fiscal 2008.
The pulsed muon facility on the Tsukuba campus that was built and maintained by Muon Science Laboratory, MSL, was closed in March 2006 after 25 years of successful operation. The new muon facility, MUSE (MUon Science Establishment), of the J-PARC Materials and the Life science research Facility, MLF, on the Tokai campus, is the successor of the old facility. After years of hard work for construction, the first beam extracted form the MUSE graphite target system has been successfully delived to the D1 beamline on September 26, 2008, and regular operation for user's experiments has started since December 2008.
During the shut-down period from FY2006 to FY2008, KEK called for user programs that utilize the muon facilities overseas to support user's research activities and accepted 25 programs in FY2008. Representatives from 21 programs gave presentations on their scientific results at this meeting.
The session was wrapped up by one of the organizers who addressed the current status of the MUSE construction and the conducted experiments at MLF. Many participants asked a variety of questions concerning the present performance of the apparatus and procedure for application of experimental proposals, reflecting their high interest in starting new researches at MUSE.
