Muon collider

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A Muon Collider is a proposed particle accelerator facility in its conceptual design stage that collides muon beams for precision studies of the Standard Model and for direct searches of new physics. Muons belong to the second generation of leptons; they are typically produced in high-energy collisions either naturally (for example by collisions of cosmic rays with the Earth's atmosphere) or artificially (in controlled environments using particle accelerators). The main challenge of such a collider is the short lifetime of muons.

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Previous lepton colliders have all used electrons and/or their anti-particles, positrons. They offer an advantage over hadron colliders, such as the CERN-based Large Hadron Collider, in that lepton collisions are relatively "clean" thanks to leptons being elementary particles, while hadrons, such as protons, are composite particles. Yet electron-positron colliders cannot efficiently reach the same centre-of-mass energy as hadron colliders in circular accelerators due to their energy loss through synchrotron radiation.

A muon is about 206 times more massive than the electron, which reduces the amount of synchrotron radiation from a muon by a factor of about 1 billion. The reduced radiation loss enables the construction of circular colliders with much higher design energies than equivalent electron-positron colliders. This provides the unique combination of high centre-of-mass energy and clean collision environment that is not achievable in any other type of particle collider. It has been shown that a muon collider could achieve energies of several teraelectronvolt (TeV). [1] In particular, starting from the centre-of-mass energy of 3 TeV, a muon collider is the most energy-efficient type of collider, while at 10 TeV it would have a physics reach comparable to that of the proposed 100 TeV hadron collider, FCC-hh, [2] while fitting in a ring of the size of the LHC (27 kilometres (17 mi)), without the need for a much-more-expensive 100-kilometre-long (62 mi) long tunnel foreseen for the Future Circular Collider. A muon collider also provides a clean and effective way to produce Higgs bosons. [3]

Muons are short-lived particles with a lifetime of 2.2 μs in their rest frame. This fact poses a serious challenge for the accelerator complex: muons must be accelerated to a high energy before they decay, and the accelerator needs a continuous source of new muons. It also impacts the experiment design: a high flux of particles induced by the muon decay products eventually reaches the detector, requiring advanced detector technologies and event-reconstruction algorithms to distinguish these particles from collision products. The baseline muon-production method considered today[ when? ] is based on a high-energy proton beam impinging on a target to produce pions, which then decay to muons that have a sizeable spread of direction and energy, which needs to be reduced for further acceleration in the ring. The possibility of performing this so-called 6D cooling of muons has been demonstrated by the Muon Ionisation Cooling Experiment (MICE). [4] An alternative production method, Low Emittance Muon Accelerator (LEMMA) [5] , uses a positron beam impinging on a fixed target to produce muon pairs from the electron-positron annihilation process at the threshold centre-of-mass energy. The resulting beam does not need the cooling stage, but suffers from a very low muon-production cross section, making it challenging to achieve high luminosity with existing positron sources.

Talks were proceeding in 2009. [6] [7] The first dedicated design of the accelerator complex and detector design for the centre-of-mass energies up to 3 TeV was developed within the American Muon Accelerator Program (MAP) during 2010–2015, [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] after which it was abandoned. [13] Interest in the Muon Collider project has increased again in 2020 after the publication of the physics-reach comparison between the 1.5 TeV Muon Collider and the CLIC experiment, [14] followed by the update of the European strategy for particle physics, in which it was recommended to initiate an international design study of a Muon Collider targeting centre-of-mass energies close to 10 TeV. [15]

See also

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Muon</span> Subatomic particle

A muon is an elementary particle similar to the electron, with an electric charge of −1 e and spin-1/2, but with a much greater mass. It is classified as a lepton. As with other leptons, the muon is not thought to be composed of any simpler particles.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Neutrino</span> Elementary particle with extremely low mass

A neutrino is an elementary particle that interacts via the weak interaction and gravity. The neutrino is so named because it is electrically neutral and because its rest mass is so small (-ino) that it was long thought to be zero. The rest mass of the neutrino is much smaller than that of the other known elementary particles. The weak force has a very short range, the gravitational interaction is extremely weak due to the very small mass of the neutrino, and neutrinos do not participate in the electromagnetic interaction or the strong interaction. Thus, neutrinos typically pass through normal matter unimpeded and undetected.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Particle physics</span> Study of subatomic particles and forces

Particle physics or high-energy physics is the study of fundamental particles and forces that constitute matter and radiation. The field also studies combinations of elementary particles up to the scale of protons and neutrons, while the study of combination of protons and neutrons is called nuclear physics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fermilab</span> High-energy particle physics laboratory in Illinois, US

Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), located in Batavia, Illinois, near Chicago, is a United States Department of Energy national laboratory specializing in high-energy particle physics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lepton</span> Class of elementary particles

In particle physics, a lepton is an elementary particle of half-integer spin that does not undergo strong interactions. Two main classes of leptons exist: charged leptons, including the electron, muon, and tauon, and neutral leptons, better known as neutrinos. Charged leptons can combine with other particles to form various composite particles such as atoms and positronium, while neutrinos rarely interact with anything, and are consequently rarely observed. The best known of all leptons is the electron.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tevatron</span> Defunct American particle accelerator at Fermilab in Illinois (1983–2011)

The Tevatron was a circular particle accelerator in the United States, at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, east of Batavia, Illinois, and was the highest energy particle collider until the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) was built near Geneva, Switzerland. The Tevatron was a synchrotron that accelerated protons and antiprotons in a 6.28 km (3.90 mi) circumference ring to energies of up to 1 TeV, hence its name. The Tevatron was completed in 1983 at a cost of $120 million and significant upgrade investments were made during its active years of 1983–2011.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tau (particle)</span> Elementary subatomic particle with negative electric charge

The tau, also called the tau lepton, tau particle, tauon or tau electron, is an elementary particle similar to the electron, with negative electric charge and a spin of ⁠1/2⁠. Like the electron, the muon, and the three neutrinos, the tau is a lepton, and like all elementary particles with half-integer spin, the tau has a corresponding antiparticle of opposite charge but equal mass and spin. In the tau's case, this is the "antitau". Tau particles are denoted by the symbol
τ−
 and the antitaus by 
τ+
.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Large Hadron Collider</span> Particle accelerator at CERN, Switzerland

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world's largest and highest-energy particle accelerator. It was built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) between 1998 and 2008 in collaboration with over 10,000 scientists and hundreds of universities and laboratories across more than 100 countries. It lies in a tunnel 27 kilometres (17 mi) in circumference and as deep as 175 metres (574 ft) beneath the France–Switzerland border near Geneva.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ATLAS experiment</span> CERN LHC experiment

ATLAS is the largest general-purpose particle detector experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a particle accelerator at CERN in Switzerland. The experiment is designed to take advantage of the unprecedented energy available at the LHC and observe phenomena that involve highly massive particles which were not observable using earlier lower-energy accelerators. ATLAS was one of the two LHC experiments involved in the discovery of the Higgs boson in July 2012. It was also designed to search for evidence of theories of particle physics beyond the Standard Model.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Large Electron–Positron Collider</span> Particle accelerator at CERN, Switzerland

The Large Electron–Positron Collider (LEP) was one of the largest particle accelerators ever constructed. It was built at CERN, a multi-national centre for research in nuclear and particle physics near Geneva, Switzerland.

A collider is a type of particle accelerator that brings two opposing particle beams together such that the particles collide. Compared to other particle accelerators in which the moving particles collide with a stationary matter target, colliders can achieve higher collision energies. Colliders may either be ring accelerators or linear accelerators.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Compact Linear Collider</span> Concept for a linear particle accelerator

The Compact Linear Collider (CLIC) is a concept for a future linear particle accelerator that aims to explore the next energy frontier. CLIC would collide electrons with positrons and is currently the only mature option for a multi-TeV linear collider. The accelerator would be between 11 and 50 km long, more than ten times longer than the existing Stanford Linear Accelerator (SLAC) in California, US. CLIC is proposed to be built at CERN, across the border between France and Switzerland near Geneva, with first beams starting by the time the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has finished operations around 2035.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Collider Detector at Fermilab</span> American experimental physics device (1985–2011)

The Collider Detector at Fermilab (CDF) experimental collaboration studies high energy particle collisions from the Tevatron, the world's former highest-energy particle accelerator. The goal is to discover the identity and properties of the particles that make up the universe and to understand the forces and interactions between those particles.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">DØ experiment</span> Particle physics research project (1983–2011)

The DØ experiment was a worldwide collaboration of scientists conducting research on the fundamental nature of matter. DØ was one of two major experiments located at the Tevatron Collider at Fermilab in Batavia, Illinois. The Tevatron was the world's highest-energy accelerator from 1983 until 2009, when its energy was surpassed by the Large Hadron Collider. The DØ experiment stopped taking data in 2011, when the Tevatron shut down, but data analysis is still ongoing. The DØ detector is preserved in Fermilab's DØ Assembly Building as part of a historical exhibit for public tours.

Leptoquarks are hypothetical particles that would interact with quarks and leptons. Leptoquarks are color-triplet bosons that carry both lepton and baryon numbers. Their other quantum numbers, like spin, (fractional) electric charge and weak isospin vary among models. Leptoquarks are encountered in various extensions of the Standard Model, such as technicolor theories, theories of quark–lepton unification (e.g., Pati–Salam model), or GUTs based on SU(5), SO(10), E6, etc. Leptoquarks are currently searched for in experiments ATLAS and CMS at the Large Hadron Collider in CERN.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Future Circular Collider</span> Proposed particle accelerator

The Future Circular Collider (FCC) is a proposed particle accelerator with an energy significantly above that of previous circular colliders, such as the Super Proton Synchrotron, the Tevatron, and the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The FCC project is considering three scenarios for collision types: FCC-hh, for hadron-hadron collisions, including proton-proton and heavy ion collisions, FCC-ee, for electron-positron collisions, and FCC-eh, for electron-hadron collisions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David B. Cline</span> American particle physicist

]

<span class="mw-page-title-main">FASER experiment</span> 2022 particle physics experiment at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN

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References

  1. ↑ Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory Center for Beam Physics Archived 27 February 2005 at the Wayback Machine [Retrieved 2012-01-08]
  2. ↑ K. R. Long, D. Lucchesi, M. A. Palmer, N. Pastrone, D. Schulte and V. Shiltsev (2021). "Muon colliders to expand frontiers of particle physics". Nature Physics. 17 (3): 289–292. arXiv: 2007.15684 . Bibcode:2021NatPh..17..289L. doi:10.1038/s41567-020-01130-x. S2CID   234356677.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  3. ↑ Jadach, S.; Kycia, R.A. (April 2016). "Lineshape of the Higgs boson in future lepton colliders". Physics Letters B. 755: 58–63. arXiv: 1509.02406 . Bibcode:2016PhLB..755...58J. doi: 10.1016/j.physletb.2016.01.065 .
  4. ↑ MICE collaboration (2020). "Demonstration of cooling by the Muon Ionization Cooling Experiment". Nature. 578 (7793): 53–59. Bibcode:2020Natur.578...53M. doi: 10.1038/s41586-020-1958-9 . PMC   7039811 . PMID   32025014.
  5. ↑ M. Antonelli, M. Boscolo, R. Di Nardo and P. Raimondi (2016). "Novel proposal for a low emittance muon beam using positron beam on target". Nucl. Instrum. Methods A. 807: 101–107. arXiv: 1509.04454 . Bibcode:2016NIMPA.807..101A. doi:10.1016/j.nima.2015.10.097. S2CID   55500891.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  6. ↑ Eric Hand 18 November 2009 Nature 462, 260–261 (2009) doi : 10.1038/462260a [Retrieved 2012-01-08]
  7. ↑ Fermilab The U.S. Department of Energy > MUONRD indico [Retrieved 2012-01-08 (site last modified: 30 September 2011)]
  8. ↑ MAP [Retrieved 2012-01-08 (site last modified: 22 March 2011)]
  9. ↑ Eddy, B. Fellenz, P. Prieto, A. Semenov, D.C. Voy, M. Wendt (Fermilab) 17 August 2011 A Wire Position Monitor System for the 1.3 GHz TESLA-style Cryomodule at the Fermilab New-Muon-Lab Accelerator. [Retrieved 2012-01-08]
  10. ↑ 6 March 2008 – The Neutrino Factory and Muon Collider Collaboration (NFMCC) pdf – 17 October 2011 [Retrieved 2012-01-08]
  11. ↑ Yonehara, Katsuya; MTA working Group (2013). "Recent progress of RF cavity study at Mucool Test Area". Journal of Physics: Conference Series. 408 (1): 012062. arXiv: 1201.5903 . Bibcode:2013JPhCS.408a2062Y. doi:10.1088/1742-6596/408/1/012062. S2CID   204924736.
  12. ↑ ISIS A World centre for Neutrinos and Muons [Retrieved 2012-01-08]
  13. ↑ Dattaro, Laura (10 April 2024). "'This is our Muon Shot' | symmetry magazine". www.symmetrymagazine.org. Retrieved 11 April 2024.
  14. ↑ N. Bartosik, A. Bertolin, L. Buonincontri, M. Casarsa, F. Collamati, A. Ferrari, A. Ferrari, A. Gianelle, D. Lucchesi, N. Mokhov, M. Palmer, N. Pastrone, P. Sala, L. Sestini and S. Striganov (2020). "Detector and Physics Performance at a Muon Collider". Journal of Instrumentation. 15 (5): P05001. arXiv: 2001.04431 . Bibcode:2020JInst..15P5001B. doi: 10.1088/1748-0221/15/05/P05001 .{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  15. ↑ CERN Courier Muon-collider study initiated
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