Filling RF cavities with dense hydrogen gas enables a new technology to generate high accelerating gradients for muons by using the high-pressure region of the Paschen curve to suppress RF breakdown. This idea of filling RF cavities with gas is new for particle accelerators and is only possible for muons because they do not scatter like strongly interacting protons or shower like less-massive electrons. The hydrogen gas also acts as an energy absorber for ionization cooling with other practical advantages that make it a simpler and more effective cooling method compared to liquid hydrogen flasks in the conventional designs. Provided one can supply the required RF power, much more gradient is possible than is needed to overcome the energy loss in the absorber, allowing other uses than ionization cooling. For example, the use of pressurized high gradient RF cavities for a Neutrino Factory would start after the muon decay region with a momentum-time phase space rotation, followed by transverse cooling, then 6-d cooling, and then acceleration into a storage ring. Each of these stages of cooling and/or acceleration would be done with pressurized RF cavities having superimposed magnetic fields as required. The path to an affordable Neutrino Factory and a credible design of a Muon Collider has four essential aspects that Muons, Inc. is pursuing through SBIR/STTR grants: High Gradient RF Cavities, High Power RF Sources, Transverse Ionization-Cooling, and Six-Dimensional Cooling. The status of the first grant and the three new proposals for these projects will be described.


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(Coffee and cookies before the seminar, starting 9:30 AM)