The Mu2e Experiment at Fermilab
| Date/Time: | Wednesday, 27 Jan 2010 from 4:10 pm to 5:10 pm |
|---|---|
| Location: | A401, Zaffarano Hall |
| Contact: | Chunhui Chen |
| Phone: | 515-294-5062 |
| Channel: | College of Liberal Arts and Sciences |
| Actions: | Download iCal/vCal | Email Reminder |
Within the Standard Model, free muons decay in a way that conserves lepton flavor number, $mu^{-}to e^{-}nu_{mu}bar{nu}_{e}$, plus radiative corrections. In many scenarios of physics beyond the Standard Model, there are additional decay modes, such as $mu^{-}to e^{-}gamma$ and $mu^{-}to e^{-} e^{+}e^{-}$, that violate the convservation of lepton flavor number. One of the most striking of these decay modes cannot occur for free muons but may occur when negative muons are bound to an atomic nucleus: coherent, neutrino-less muon to electron conversion in the Coulomb field of a nucleus. In this process, final state is a mono-energetic electron, with a momentum slightly less than the muon mass, plus an unobserved, recoiling, intact nucleus. The Mu2e collaboration has proposed an experiment to search for muon to electron conversion. This
experiment is to be mounted at Fermilab and is projected to have a sensitivity 4 orders of magnitude better than the best previous experiment. For some models of physics beyond the standard model,
the Mu2e experiment has sensitivity to new particles with masses up to 10,000 TeV, far beyond the range that is directly accessible at the LHC. This talk will introduce muon to electron conversion, will
discuss some of the new physics scenarios to which it is sensitive and will describe the experimental apparatus.