Muon g-2 storage ring arrives at Fermilab

July 23, 2013

The muon g-2 magnetic ring will complete its move from Brookhaven to Fermilab on Friday, July 26, 2013. The 3200-mile journey took the ring down the Atlantic seaboard, around Florida, and up the Mississippi river. The ring arrived in Lemont, Illinois last Saturday and began its final trek along the Illinois highways on Tuesday. The arrival will be celebrated at Fermilab on Friday (http://muon-g-2.fnal.gov/bigmove/). 

Superconducting coils are key components to the 650-ton precision storage ring, which stores muons to measure their anomalous magnetic moment. The storage ring is being moved to Fermilab to enable the next generation experiment expected to improve on previous results by a factor of four. These measurements will be used to probe physics beyond the Standard Model by seeking differences between measured and predicted values that could be ascribed to undiscovered virtual particles. The previous experiment based at Brookhaven Lab, which the BU physics team played a leading role in, observed a 3 to 4 standard deviation difference between experiment and the Standard Model. The g-2 experiment will be constructed between 2013 and 2015, and is expected to start collecting data in 2016. Professor Lee Roberts is co-spokesperson for the new experiment. Other collaborators at Boston University include Professors Jim Miller and Rob Carey, Research Associates Emma Barnes and Ameya Kolarkar, and graduate student Nick Kinnaird. Significant components of the new experiment are being built by the Boston University SIF and EDF.

Muon g-2 ring on barge passing St. Louis The muon g-2 ring being unloaded from the barge.