1. A progress report on recent rare muon decay experiments at the los alamos meson physics facility
- Author
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J. D. Bowman, R. D. Carlini, Gary E. Hogan, R. E. Mischke, M. Duong-van, R. A. Williams, Urs Sennhauser, E. B. Hughes, M. D. Cooper, G. H. Sanders, C.M. Huffman, S. C. Wright, H. S. Matis, P. Heusi, R. L. Talaga, J. S. Frank, R. Werbeck, V. D. Sandberg, V. L. Highland, D. Grosnick, S. L. Wilson, A. L. Hallin, R. Hofstadter, D. E. Nagle, F. G. Mariam, and R. D. Bolton
- Subjects
Physics ,Nuclear physics ,Nuclear and High Energy Physics ,Full width at half maximum ,Muon ,Photon ,Meson ,Physics::Instrumentation and Detectors ,Branching fraction ,Scintillation counter ,Electron ,Scintillator - Abstract
A search has been performed for the decays μ → eee, μ → e γ , and μ → eγγ with a sensitivity in the branching ratios at the level of 10 −10 . The experiment used a separated, 26 MeV/c μ + beam with an average intensity of 300kHz. A total of 2.2 × 10 11 muon decays were examined for the present result. The detector for the experiment Is the Crystal Box, which consists of a cylindrical drift chamber surrounded by 396 NaI(T1) crystals. A layer of scintillation counters in front of the crystals provided timing for electrons and a veto for photons. The energy resolution for electrons and photons is ≈6% (FWHM). The position resolution of the drift chamber is 350 μm leading to a vertex cut with a rejection of 10 3 for μ → eee. The timing resolution is ≈300 ps from the scintillators and ~1 ns from the crystals. No candidate for μ → eee has been found, yielding an upper limit for the branching ratio of B μ 3e −10 (90% C.L.).
- Published
- 1985
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