Contact Information
Department of Physics525 Northwestern Avenue
West Lafayette, IN
47907-2036
Map and Directions
Telephone:
(765) 494-2970
Fax:
(765) 494-0706
Doug Glenzinski
Fermilab
"A Rare Opportunity - the Mu2e Experiment at Fermilab"
Thursday January 17, 2013
4:00pm PHYS203
Refreshments are served at 3:30 p.m. in Physics room 242
The muon, a heavy cousin of the electron, was discovered in 1936. Since that time they have only ever been observed to do one of two things: 1) interact with a nucleus, or 2) decay into an electron and two neutrinos. But a new experiment at Fermilab - the Mu2e experiment - is going to look for a third thing: a muon interacting with a nucleus to produce an electron and nothing else. This is a process that's predicted to occur very very rarely, maybe once every quadrillion muon decays, (or less!). But this very rare decay may hold the key to understanding physics at its most fundamental level. The Mu2e experiment is an ambitious endeavor whose goal is to observe this very rare decay for the first time - a discovery that could help reveal a new paradigm of particle physics.