THE MULAN EXPERIMENT

A Measurement of the Positive Muon Lifetime
utilizing the µLan (MUON Lifetime ANalysis) Detector.
PSI Experiment R99.07.01 The Muon Lifetime Analysis (MuLan) experiment will measure the positive muon lifetime to a precision of one part per million (ppm). The muon lifetime provides the most precise determination of the Fermi coupling constant, which is one of the fundamental inputs to the Standard Model. Recent advances in theory have reduced the theoretical uncertainty on the Fermi coupling constant as calculated from the muon lifetime to a few tenths of a ppm. The remaining uncertainty on the Fermi constant is entirely experimental, and is dominated by the uncertainty on the muon lifetime. The MuLan experiment will use an innovative pulsed beam, a symmetric detector, and modern data-taking methods to reduce the uncertainty on the muon lifetime to 1 ppm. Research supported by

[*]

R04 Run Results Published by PRL, July 2007 (preprint)

Recent Muon Lifetime Measurements (Plot) (eps)

Physics Issues and News

General information on the Muon (Courtesy of the Particle Data Group) :
Information on the Muon (ps) or (pdf)
Information on Muon Decay Parameters (ps) or (pdf)
Electroweak Model and Constraints on New Physics (pdf)

A summary of the experiment can be obtained here
We keep a list of recent articles related to the lifetime of the positive muon. See also the list of papers in the internal links below.

Public Links

Collaboration List (with telephone, e-mail, and web pages).
Bartoszek Engineering MuLan Page
Publications and Talks Page
Progress and Annual Reports
Original proposal in HTML and PostScript.
Photo tour.

Internal Links

Other

This work is performed with the proton accelerator at Paul Scherrer Institut in Villigen, Switzerland.
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[*] This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. NSF PHY 06-010167. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

This page is maintained by David Webber. For comments or suggestions, please mail me at dwebber_at_uiuc_dot_edu.