Measurement of Muon g-2 at Fermilab

Speaker: Nick Kinnaird, Boston University, Physics Department

When: April 17, 2019 (Wed), 11:00AM to 12:00PM (add to my calendar)
Location: PRB 365

This event is part of the Departmental Seminars.

Dissertation committee: Lee Roberts, Ken Lane, Shyam Erramilli, Jim Miller, and Rob Carey.

One of the few indications for new physics is the discrepancy between the theoretical and experimental values for the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon. There is a 3 to 4 sigma discrepancy between theory and the last experimental measurement held at Brookhaven National Laboratory in 2001, which measured the muon g-2 to 540 parts per billion. This discrepancy has been consistent for many years now with ever improving theoretical calculations and other experimental measurements. In order to resolve or confirm this difference, a new experiment is underway at Fermilab to measure the muon g-2 to 4 times higher precision at 140 ppb. Muon g-2 at Fermilab gathered its first production data in 2018, and is currently taking data now. I will describe the principles of the experiment and detail two specific parts of the analysis that I have been involved in. These include track fitting and precession frequency analysis of the Run 1 data.