Wednesday 25 May 2016 

Speaker: Ben Krikler (Imperial College)


Title: "The COMET Experiment: Searching for Muon-to-Electron Conversion" 

Abstract: Muon decay in the Standard Model requires the emission of two neutrinos thanks to the conservation of Lepton Flavour. Given neutrino oscillations, however, this conservation is known to be violated, albeit at a tiny level in the Standard Model alone. The COMET experiment is one of a handful of projects hoping to demonstrate Charged Lepton Flavour Violation which would be a clear sign of New Physics, searching for COherent Muon to Electron Transitions, where a muon converts to an electron in the presence of an atomic nucleus, without neutrino emission. In this seminar I will give an overview of the process of muon-to-electron conversion and the COMET experiment itself, with which the UK has been involved since its inception. COMET Phase-I is currently under construction and due to begin data taking in JFY 2018. Whilst this stage aims for a factor 100 improvement on the current limit to around 3x10^-15, Phase-II will go a further two orders of magnitude and run at the beginning of the next decade. Setting such stringent limits produces many significant design challenges. These and the progress to their solutions will be presented, as well as recent developments in facility, beam-line and detector construction.