Table of Contents
Why is the muon important?
The muon’s magnetic moment is larger than expected — a hint that new elementary particles are waiting to be discovered. Muons keep on misbehaving. If the results hold up, they could ultimately force major changes in theoretical physics and reveal the existence of completely new fundamental particles.
What is a muon force?
What is a muon? A muon is a type of high-energy particle called a lepton. Unlike particles like protons which are made up of electrons and quarks, leptons are considered “fundamental particles,” meaning they’re not composed of any smaller parts.
What is muon g2 anomaly?
Muon g-2 (pronounced “gee minus two”) is a particle physics experiment at Fermilab to measure the anomalous magnetic dipole moment of a muon to a precision of 0.14 ppm, which will be a sensitive test of the Standard Model. Any deviation would point to as yet undiscovered subatomic particles that exist in nature.
What is the muon g-2 ring?
The Muon g-2 experiment sends a beam of muons into a ring of magnets, where they circulate thousands of times at nearly the speed of light. Detectors lining the ring allow scientists to determine how fast the muons are precessing.
How do muons interact with matter?
Muons, being charged particles, interact with matter by ionizing it. The loss of energy by muons passing throught he atmosphere is proportional to the amout of matter they traverse. The medium is usually characterized by its density (g/cm3) times the distance traveled in centimeters.
How can we use muons?
Since muons are much more deeply penetrating than X-rays, muon tomography can be used to image through much thicker material than x-ray based tomography such as CT scanning. The muon flux at the Earth’s surface is such that a single muon passes through an area the size of a human hand per second.
What do muons make up?
As with other leptons, the muon is not known to have any sub-structure – that is, it is not thought to be composed of any simpler particles. The muon is an unstable subatomic particle with a mean lifetime of 2.2 μs, much longer than many other subatomic particles.
Why is the Muon g-2 experiment important?
The experiment reported a tiny difference between how muons should behave according to the Standard Model, and what they were actually doing inside the giant accelerator. Murmurs broke out around the world, and the minds of Hooper, Krnjaic and their colleagues in theoretical physics began to race.
How does muon g2 work?
How does the G-2 experiment work?
The Muon g-2 experiment sends a beam of muons into the storage ring, where they circulate thousands of times at nearly the speed of light. Detectors lining the ring allow scientists to determine how fast the muons are precessing.
Are muons stable?
Unlike the electron, which appears to be completely stable, the muon decays after an average lifetime of 2.2 millionths of a second into an electron, a neutrino, and an antineutrino. This process, like the beta decay of a neutron into a proton, an electron, and an antineutrino, occurs via the weak force.
What is muon radiation?
The muon is an unstable subatomic particle with a mean lifetime of 2.2 μs, much longer than many other subatomic particles. Due to their greater mass, muons accelerate more slowly than electrons in electromagnetic fields, and emit less bremsstrahlung (deceleration radiation).
What is the g-2 anomaly?
This was called the g-2 anomaly (after a number called the gyromagnetic factor). Muons are subatomic and can’t be seen with the naked eye, so it could’ve been that the instruments the physicists were using to study the muons indirectly were glitching. Or it could’ve been that the physicists had made a mistake in their calculations.
What is muon g-2?
The Muon g-2 experiment hosted at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory announced on April 7 that they had measured a particle called a muon behaving slightly differently than predicted in their giant accelerator. It was the first unexpected news in particle physics in years.
What can we learn from the muon anomaly?
Jorge Cham, aka, PHD Comics, illustrates the excitement over the muon anomaly results in a set of cartoons he made for Physics. The observation of neutral D mesons oscillating into their antiparticle partners provides constraints on new heavy particles that can’t be directly produced by high-energy colliders.
Why do electrons have a low G-2 charge?
But because the electron is so light, its charge-to-mass ratio is very low, which means the effects of “g-2” are dominated by the electromagnetic force.