31 July 2017 to 4 August 2017
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory
US/Central timezone

Monte Carlo Simulations of the PEN experiment: A Precision Measurement of $\pi\rightarrow$e$\nu(\gamma)$ Branching Ratio

1 Aug 2017, 10:45
25m
Sunrise (Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory)

Sunrise

Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory

Presentation Precision Electroweak Physics Precision Electroweak Physics

Speaker

Mr Charles Glaser (University of Virginia)

Description

The PEN collaboration performed a precision measurement of the $\pi^+\rightarrow e^+\nu_e(\gamma)$ branching ratio with the goal of obtaining a relative uncertainty of $5\times10^{-4}$ or better at the Paul Scherrer Institute. A precision measurement of the branching ratio $\Gamma(\pi\rightarrow e\bar{\nu}(\gamma))/\Gamma(\pi\rightarrow \mu \bar{\nu}(\gamma))$ can be used to give mass bounds on ``new'', or non V$-$A, particles and interactions. This ratio also proves to be one of the most sensitive tests for lepton universality. The PEN detector consists of beam counters, an active target, a mini-time projection chamber, cylindrical multi-wire proportional chambers, a plastic scintillating hodoscope, and a spherical 240-module pure CsI electromagnetic calorimeter. The Geant4 Monte Carlo simulation is used to construct ultra-realistic events by digitizing energies and times, creating synthetic target waveforms, and fully accounting for photo-electron statistics. We focus on the detailed detector response to signal and background processes in order to sharpen the discrimination between them in the data analysis.

Primary author

Mr Charles Glaser (University of Virginia)

Presentation materials

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