Muon storage rings have been proposed for use as a source of high-energy neutrino beams (the Neutrino Factory) and as the basis for a high-energy lepton-antilepton collider (the Muon Collider). The Neutrino Factory is widely believed to be the machine of choice for the search for leptonic CP violation while the Muon Collider may prove to be the most practical route to multi-TeV lepton-antilepton collisions. The baseline conceptual designs for each of these facilities requires the phase-space compression (cooling) of the muon beams prior to acceleration. The short muon lifetime makes it impossible to employ traditional techniques to cool the beam while maintaining the muon-beam intensity. Ionization cooling, a process in which the muon beam is passed through a series of liquid-hydrogen absorbers followed by accelerating RF cavities, is the technique proposed to cool the muon beam. The international Muon Ionization Cooling Experiment (MICE) collaboration will carry out a systematic study of ionization cooling. The MICE experiment, which is under construction at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, will begin to take data late this year. The MICE cooling channel, the instrumentation and the implementation at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory are described together with the predicted performance of the channel and the measurements that will be made.
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