The Mu3e experiment at PSI

The Mu3e experiment will search for the decay of a muon to three electrons, which would violate lepton flavour conservation. This decay is suppressed to unobservable levels in the standard model of particle physics, and any observation would therefore be a direct sign of new physics. The experiment is currently under construction at the Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland. The first physics run is expected to take place in 2026.

Mu3e will record more than 1016 muon decays to probe the existence of ultra-rare decay processes that would provide evidence of new physics beyond the standard model. Mu3e exploits the worlds most intense muon beams, available at PSI, which can deliver more than 109 muons per second to the experiment.

The muons are stopped on a thin target, inside Mu3e, from where they decay and their decay products are detected with the Mu3e detector. The experiment must handle high particle rates, have excellent vertex resolution (<200 μm), time resolution (<0.1 ns), and momentum resolution (< 0.5 MeV/c) for electrons and positrons in the range from 10 to 53 MeV/c.

The Liverpool Mu3e team work on the construction of the outer layers of the ultra-low-mass CMOS pixel tracker and on preparations for physics analyses once the experiment starts.  

Team Leader

  • Prof Joost Vossebeld

Academic, Research and Technical Staff

  • Dr Nikolaos Rompotis
  • Dr Helen Hayward
  • Dr Paolo Beltrame
  • Dr Mark Wong
  • Mr Matthew Brown

PhD Students 

  • Mr Jak Woodford
  • Mr Charles Kinsman
  • Mr Sean Hughes (completed)
  • Mrs Afaf Wasili (completed)
  • Mr Andrew Groves (completed)

 

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