Is new physics lurking in the magnetic interaction of a muon ?

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• Mark Lancaster - U. Manchester
• Wednesday 17 March 2021, 16:00-17:00
• Zoom - check your email.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Amaury Triaud.

The interaction of a muon’s spin with a magnetic field defines its magnetic moment in terms of the gyromagnetic ratio, g. In the Dirac equation, g is exactly 2, but additional higher order QED , electroweak and strong interactions increase its value by ~ 0.1% such that g-2 is predicted to be: 0.0023318364(7). g of the electron is the most accurately predicted and measured quantity in physics and g of the muon is the most accurately measured quantity using a particle accelerator storage ring.

At present there exists a discrepancy between the measurement of the muon’s g-2 (0.0023318418(13)) and the prediction with a significance of 3.6 standard deviations. Whether this is telling us that there is new physics beyond the Standard Model of particle physics e.g. that could explain the preponderance of dark-matter in the universe or a statistical fluctuation will be resolved by a new experiment that has recently started taking data at Fermilab, USA . I will describe the history of this measurement and the new experiment and how we expect to achieve a precision of 0.14 parts per million on this exciting new measurement and so hopefully resolve whether the magnetic interaction of a muon is a harbinger of new physics.

This talk is part of the Physics and Astronomy Colloquia series.

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