The Mu2e experiment at Fermilab will search for coherent, neutrinoless conversion of negative muons into electrons in the field of an aluminum nucleus. The dynamics of such charged lepton flavour ...violating (CLFV) process is a twobody decay, resulting in a mono-energetic electron with an energy slightly below the muon rest mass. If no events are observed in three years of running, Mu2e will set an upper limit on the ratio between the conversion and the capture rates Rμe of ≤ 6 × 10-17 (@90% C.L.). This will improve the current limit of four order of magnitudes with respect to the previous best experiment. Mu2e complements and extends the current search for μ → eγ decay at MEG as well as the direct searches for new physics at the LHC. Indeed, such a CLFV process probes new physics at a scale inaccessible to direct searches at either present or planned high energy colliders. Observation of a signal will be a clear evidence for new physics beyond the Standard Model. To search for the muon conversion process, a very intense pulsed beam of negative muons (~ 1010 μ/s) is stopped on an aluminum target inside a very long solenoid where the detector is also located. The Mu2e detector is composed of a straw tube tracker and an electromagnetic calorimeter consisting of arrays of CsI crystals. An external veto for cosmic rays is surrounding the detector solenoid. In 2016, Mu2e has passed the final approval stage from DOE and has started its construction phase. Data collection is planned for the end of 2021. Lastly, an overview of the physics motivations for Mu2e, the current status of the experiment and design of the muon beam-line and the detector is presented.
The Mu2e calorimeter consists of 1348 pure CsI crystals coupled to two large area UV-extended Silicon Photomultipliers (SiPMs) organized in two separate annular disks. An intense R&D phase has been ...pursued to check if this configuration satisfies the Mu2e requirements. In May 2017, a dedicated test has been performed at the Beam Test Facility (BTF) in Frascati (Italy) where the large calorimeter prototype (Module-0) has been exposed to an electron beam in the energy range between 60 and 120 MeV. The prototype consists of 51 crystals, each one readout by two Mu2e SiPMs. We present results for timing and energy resolution both for electrons at normal incidence (0°) and at a grazing impact angle (50°) more similar to the experiment configuration. At 100 MeV, an energy resolution of 5.4% (7.4%) at normal (grazing) incidence has been achieved in good agreement with Monte Carlo expectation. In the same energy range, a time resolution of ∼ XX ps (∼ YY ps) has been measured at normal incidence with 1 GHz (250 MHz) sampling rate. Dependence of time and energy resolutions as a function of beam energy and impinging angle are also presented.
The Mu2e calorimeter consists of 1348 undoped CsI crystals coupled to two large area UV-extended Silicon Photomultipliers (SiPMs). A modular and custom SiPM layout, a 3×2 matrix of 6×6 mm2 monolithic ...SiPMs, has been developed to satisfy the Mu2e requirements. As well as ensuring the performances needed for the muon-to-electron conversion search, these photosensors have to guarantee a good reliability while operating maintenance-free in the Mu2e hostile environment: any failure can only be replaced during a long technical shut-down scheduled once a year. After testing prototypes from different vendors, we selected Hamamatsu and the final production of about 4000 pieces is now ongoing. A detailed Quality Assurance (QA) program is then mandatory to minimize the risk of an unexpected further degradation in the performances. The QA process for each photosensor includes a first visual inspection and the subsequent characterization of each of its monolithic cells by means of an automatized test station, able to measure the breakdown voltage, the gain and the dark current. For each production batch (∼300 pieces), 5 devices are exposed to a neutron fluency up to ∼1.4×1011 1 MeV (Si) eq. n/cm2; others 15 devices are undergone an accelerated aging in order to verify the Mean Time To Failure (MTTF) of the batch. A summary of the QA and the results for the firsts 4 production batches are presented in the paper.
The Mu2e experiment at Fermilab searches for the charged-lepton flavor violating neutrino-less conversion of a negative muon into an electron in the field of an aluminum nucleus. The dynamics of such ...a process is well modeled by a two-body decay, resulting in a monoenergetic electron with an energy slightly below the muon rest mass (104.967 MeV). The calorimeter of this experiment plays an important role to provide excellent particle identification capabilities and an online trigger filter while aiding the track reconstruction capabilities. The baseline calorimeter configuration consists of two disks each made with ∼ 700 undoped CsI crystals read out by two large area UV-extended Silicon Photomultipliers. These crystals match the requirements for stability of response, high resolution and radiation hardness. In this paper we present the final calorimeter design.
The Mu2e experiment at Fermilab aims to measure the neutrinoless muon-to-electron conversion, which is a charged-lepton flavor-violating process. The goal of the experiment is to reach a single event ...sensitivity of 2.5 × 10 -17, to set an upper limit on the muon conversion rate at 6.7 × 10 -17 in a three-year run. For this purpose, the Mu2e detector is designed to identify electrons from muon conversion and reduce the background to a negligible level. It consists of a low-mass straw tracker and a pure CsI crystal calorimeter. In this paper, the performance of undoped CsI single crystal is reported. Crystals from many vendors have been characterized by determining their Light Yield (LY) and Longitudinal Response Uniformity (LRU), when read with a UV extended PMT, and their time resolution when coupled to a silicon photomultiplier. The crystals show a LY of ~100 photoelectrons per MeV when wrapped with Tyvek and coupled to the PMT without optical grease. The LRU is well represented by a linear slope that is on average 0.6%/cm. Both measurements have been performed using a 22Na source. The timing performance has been evaluated exploiting cosmic rays, with MPPC readout. A timing resolution lower than 400 ps has been achieved (at ~20 MeV, which is the energy released by a minimum ionizing particle in the crystal).
PDF
