One year ago, the 50-foot-wide
Muon g-2 electromagnet arrived at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Fermi
National Accelerator Laboratory in Illinois after traveling 3,200 miles
over land and sea from Long Island, New York. This week, the magnet took
the final few steps of that journey, moving across the Fermilab site
and into the new building that now houses it.
The gigantic electromagnet is
the centerpiece of Fermilab’s Muon g-2 experiment, which will
investigate the properties of an elusive subatomic particle called the
muon. Since its arrival at Fermilab on July 26, 2013, the magnet has
been biding its time, waiting for the completion of the new building on
site that will house the experiment.
That building was finished in
April, and in a series of two moves over the past six days, the ring was
transported across the Fermilab site and slowly pulled into place on
huge metal tracks. A crowd of scientists and enthusiasts were on hand to
cheer the magnet on, and applaud the next phase of muon physics at
Fermilab.
“We’re all very excited to see
this device move that last mile and be put in place,” said Chris Polly,
project manager for the Muon g-2 experiment. “For those of us who have
been working on this for years, it’s a great moment, and it brings us
closer to taking data and having our questions answered.”
Muons are heavy cousins of
electrons. The experiment will be used to study muons created in
Fermilab’s particle accelerators. Muons “wobble” when placed in a
magnetic field, and based on what we know about the universe, scientists
have predicted the ultra-precise value of that wobble. The predecessor
experiment using this magnet at Brookhaven National Laboratory in New
York in the 1990s saw evidence for – though not definitive proof of – a
departure from that expected value.
Scientists think that this deviation might be due to the presence of heavy, undiscovered particles or hidden subatomic forces.
Fermilab’s accelerator complex can generate a more intense and pure
beam of muons, so the new experiment should be able to provide a
definitive answer. Should the Muon g-2 experiment also see a deviation
from the expected value, it could open the door to new mysteries of the
universe.The electromagnet was specifically designed for muon experiments like this one. To build a new one at Fermilab would have cost about $30 million, but transporting the ring from New York cost only $3 million.
“The arrival of the magnet one
year ago, and the move to the newly completed building this week, are
both testaments to the years of planning and work by the entire
collaboration,” said David Hertzog, co-spokesperson for the Muon g-2
experiment. “It’s an important milestone, and cause for celebration.”
Once the ring is in place, it
will take several months to set up the detectors for the experiment.
Following that, the magnet will need to be shimmed to ensure the most
precise measurement possible, and that process could take upwards of a
year. The experiment is expected to start taking data in 2017.
Muon g-2 is the first of two
muon experiments planned for Fermilab, both of which will enhance our
knowledge about these fundamental particles. Both the Muon g-2 and the
Muon-to-Electron (Mu2e) experiments were specifically recommended by the
Particle Physics Project Prioritization Panel in its recent report, a
document that serves as a road map for U.S. particle physics for the
next 20 years. The P5 report was approved by the High Energy Physics
Advisory Panel, which advises both the DOE and the National Science
Foundation.
The Muon g-2 collaboration comprises 120 scientists from 26
institutions in six countries. For more information about the
experiment, visit http://muon-g-2.fnal.gov.
Fermilab
is America’s premier national laboratory for particle physics and
accelerator research. A U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science
laboratory, Fermilab is located near Chicago, Illinois, and operated
under contract by the Fermi Research Alliance, LLC. Visit Fermilab’s
website at www.fnal.gov and follow us on Twitter at @FermilabToday.
The
DOE Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research
in the physical sciences in the United States and is working to address
some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information,
please visit science.energy.gov.
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