Mu2e

Three women are spending their summer contributing to one of the largest and most ambitious physics experiments in the country — the Mu2e project at the Fermilab thanks to the DOE RENEW grant.

Stefano Miscetti will help lead the Mu2e experiment into its commissioning phase.

From University of Virginia Today, March 7, 2023: University of Virginia physicists shipped its last truckload of five large, specialized panels that contain the detector that will form the shell of the international Muon-to-electron Conversion Experiment, or Mu2e experiment. UVA professors, technicians, postdoctoral fellows, graduate students and undergrads have worked on a total of 83 detector modules, each weighing as much as 2,000 pounds, totaling about 160,000 pounds of materials.

From University of Virginia Today, March 7, 2023: University of Virginia physicists shipped the last truckload of five large, specialized panels that contain the detector that will form the shell of the international Muon-to-electron Conversion Experiment, or Mu2e experiment. UVA professors, technicians, postdoctoral fellows, graduate students and undergrads have worked on a total of 83 detector modules, each weighing as much as 2,000 pounds, totaling about 160,000 pounds of materials.

The Mu2e experiment at Fermilab will look for a never-before-seen subatomic phenomenon that, if observed, would transform our understanding of elementary particles: the direct conversion of a muon into an electron. An international collaboration of over 200 scientists is building the Mu2e precision particle detector that will hunt for new physics beyond the Standard Model.

Fermilab scientists and engineers are developing a machine learning platform to help run Fermilab’s accelerator complex alongside a fast-response machine learning application for accelerating particle beams. The programs will work in tandem to boost efficiency and energy conservation in Fermilab accelerators.

Magnets play a key role in looking for the direct transformation of muons into electrons, a theorized phenomenon that Fermilab’s Mu2e experiment will hunt for when it comes online in 2023. In an important milestone, seven essential magnets have passed testing and been accepted for the construction of the experiment.

For five years, a recycled MRI magnet has provided strong magnetic fields for cross-calibration and testing of equipment used in major physics experiments, including the Muon g-2 and Mu2e Fermilab experiments.

Bernstein is overseeing the Fermilab Mu2e experiment as it moves from its construction to installation phase and into a running experiment. A collaboration of nearly 250 scientists at 40 institutions that had to invent technology to get to this point, Mu2e is in an exciting phase, especially for early-career researchers who will not only construct the experiment, but also analyze the data.

Humans and robots work together in a carefully choreographed dance to maintain peak production target performance in Mu2e’s search for new physics – direct muon-to-electron conversion.