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Mu2e: muon-to-electron-conversion experiment

Feature

Collaboration

A team of physicists from all over the world, including postdocal researchers and graduate and undergraduate students, are working together to design, test, and build the Mu2e experiment. On the left, colleagues from Frascati are shown working on the mechanical support for a calorimeter prototype module.

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Collaboration

A team of physicists from all over the world, including postdocal researchers and graduate and undergraduate students, are working together to design, test, and build the Mu2e experiment. On the left, students from the University of Minnesota work to build a prototype panel for the tracker.

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Collaboration

A team of physicists from all over the world, including postdocal researchers and graduate and undergraduate students, are working together to design, test, and build the Mu2e experiment. On the left, students from CUNY York prepare end-pieces for the tracker straws.

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Outreach

Communicating the science, challenges, and excitement of the Mu2e experiment is an important component of our work. On the left, a Mu2e researcher gives a tour of the Mu2e experimental hall during a recent open house event at Fermilab.

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Collaboration

A team of physicists from all over the world, including postdocal researchers and graduate and undergraduate students, are working together to design, test, and build the Mu2e experiment. On the left, a team of researchers prepare a module for the cosmic ray veto system at the University of Virginia.

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Muon Campus

The Mu2e experiment will be housed in a custom-made building on the new Muon Campus at Fermilab. The campus also includes the Muon g-2 experiment, which shares a beam line and utilities with Mu2e. An aerial view of the Muon Campus is depicted on the left. Also visible is Wilson Hall.

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LGBTQ+ STEM Day

The Mu2e Collaboration participated in the first International Day of LGBTQ+ People in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Maths. We recognize that many LGBTQ+ people in STEM have experienced or observed exclusionary behavior, and believe that a day of recognition can help raise awareness and increase support for the LGBTQ+ community. #LGBTSTEMDAY
Learn more : LGBTQ+ STEM Day
Vertical Slice Test

Our first tracker plane being craned by Wanda Newby,saluted by Mete Yucel, and supervised by Aseet Mukherjee. Photo by Bob Tschirhart. The tracker is the device that measures the momentum of the electron in muon-to-electron conversion. It's made of about 22,000 straws each about the diameter of a pencil, and with walls about as thick as a human hair. There will be 18 of the planes like the one here. @Mu2eExperiment
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In recent years, particle physicists have increasingly turned their attention to finding physics beyond the Standard Model, the current description of the building blocks of matter and how they interact.

Discoveries beyond the Standard Model will help scientists answer some of the most fundamental questions about matter and our universe. Were the forces of nature combined in one unifying force at the time of the Big Bang? How did the universe change from being dominated by energy and radiation remnants from the Big Bang to the one we see today with visible matter, including people and plants?

Addressing these challenging questions will require combining insight and observations from the three discovery frontiers: Cosmic, Energy and Intensity. The linchpin for discovery during the next few decades will be research at the Intensity Frontier on ultra-rare processes, including muon-to-electron conversion. Intensity Frontier searches will provide part of the context to interpret discoveries made on the other frontiers and narrow the number of plausible theories for the origins of physics beyond the Standard Model.

Mu2e will directly probe the Intensity Frontier as well as aid research on the Energy and Cosmic frontiers with precision measurements required to characterize the properties and interactions of new particles discovered at the Intensity Frontier.

Observing muon-to-electron conversion will remove a hurdle to understanding why particles in the same category, or family, decay from heavy to lighter, more stable mass states. Physicists have searched for this since the 1940s. Discovering this is central to understanding what physics lies beyond the Standard Model.

At the most simplistic level, electrons are responsible for the electricity that lights our houses and turns on our computers. Muons are some sort of heavier cousin of the electron, but we're not sure just what the relationship is. This experiment will help us understand that relationship, and so understanding muons is part of understanding the electrons that power our society.

Construction of the experiment has begun and first beam commissioning is expected to start in early 2025.