AlCap: Quantifying Backgrounds for the Mu2e Experiment

Speaker: John Quirk

When: May 9, 2014 (Fri), 02:00PM to 03:00PM (add to my calendar)
Location: PRB 365

This event is part of the Preliminary Oral Exam.

Examining Committee:

Abstract: James Miller, Shyamsunder Erramilli, Ed Kearns, Martin Schmaltz

Until the discovery of neutrino oscillation, Lepton Flavor Violation (LFV) was thought to be an unbroken symmetry of the physical world. Augmenting the Standard Model (SM) with a neutrino mass term has been the best explanation for this phenomenon. This extension additionally leads to unobservably low rates of charged LFV, whereas many New Physics (NP) models predict a greatly enhanced branching ratio for these processes. Therefore any observation would clearly indicate NP. The Muon to Electron Conversion Experiment (Mu2e) at Fermilab aims to either observe the conversion in the presence of an aluminum nucleus, or set an upper limit on the mu+Al->e+Al branching ratio 10,000 times better than any previous measurement. As a precision experiment, control of backgrounds is of paramount importance. This talk will focus on the Aluminum Capture Experiment (AlCap), which aims to quantify certain backgrounds to an unprecedented level in order to aid in making design decisions for Mu2e.

John Quirk