Embodiments of the present invention disclose use equipment (UE), a base station, and a cell discovery method. The method includes: receiving, by the UE, auxiliary information, where the auxiliary information includes resource information of a second reference signal of a first neighboring cell; detecting, by the UE, a first reference signal of the first neighboring cell according to the auxiliary information to make the UE synchronize with the first neighboring cell; and detecting, by the UE according to the auxiliary information, the first reference signal of the first neighboring cell, or the second reference signal of the first neighboring cell, or the first reference signal and the second reference signal that are of the first neighboring cell, to acquire a cell identity ID or a virtual ID of the first neighboring cell.