Status of the Mu3e Experiment at PSI

Physikalisches Institut, Heidelberg University, Im Neuenheimer Feld 226, 69120 Heidelberg, Germany

^a e-mail: perrevoort@physi.uni-heidelberg.de

Published online: 26 April 2016

Abstract

The Mu3e experiment aims to search for the lepton-flavour violating decay μ⁺ → e⁺e⁺e⁻ with a sensitivity to one signal decay in 10¹⁶ muon decays at a muon stopping rate of 2 × 10⁹ muons/s. With currently available rates of 10⁸ muons/s, a sensitivity on the branching ratio of 10^-15 is the aim of the first phase. This will allow for tests of new physics models with enhanced branching ratios for lepton-flavour violating processes with an unprecedented precision.

The experiment must be operated at very high muon rates all the while suppressing the background of the decay ${\mu }^{+}\to e^{+}{e}^{-}{e}^{+}{\overline{\nu }}_{\mu }{\nu }_e$ and accidental electron-positron combinations. Therefore, a tracking detector made of thin pixel sensors with additional scintillating fibres and tiles for precise time measurement will be built. The development of the subdetectors is ongoing while detector construction is still in preparation.