18–19 Jun 2018
Fermilab, Wilson Hall
US/Central timezone

Design of the Mu2e Straw Tracker

19 Jun 2018, 09:30
15m
One West (Fermilab, Wilson Hall)

One West

Fermilab, Wilson Hall

Oral Presentation Muon Physics

Speaker

Kate Ciampa (University of Minnesota)

Description

Mu2e will search for the neutrinoless conversion of a muon to an electron in the presence of a nucleus, µ+N(A,Z) -> e+N(A,Z), more commonly known as charged lepton flavor violation (CLFV). A decay of this sort is extremely suppressed in the Standard Model, on the order 10^{-54}. A process of this kind may never be observed in a lab so detecting it would be an unambiguous evidence of new physics. New physics models predict a muon-to-electron conversion rate of order 10^{-14} – 10^{-16}. There are many experiments looking for a flavor-violating muon in the presence of a nucleus. Mu2e is improving the current limit set by these experiments by 4 orders of magnitude to reach a single event sensitivity of 3×10^{-17}. This sensitivity will help reduce the number of possible new physics theories to lead us to the correct one. Achieving the 10,000-fold improvement requires a tracker that is very efficient at separating background events from signal events and can reduce the background to less than half an event over the three-year run period. In this talk we will focus on the design challenges of the tracker and how we overcame them. A low mass tracker to minimize the energy loss of the electrons as they propagate through it and a momentum resolution better than 180 keV/c are just two of such challenges. Also, we will mention the stages a signal electron will go through from the moment of its birth near an aluminum nucleus to its eventual resting place in the shielding behind the detector.

Primary author

Kate Ciampa (University of Minnesota)

Presentation materials