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A Renaissance for Muon Physics (Who ordered that?)

by Craig Group (University of Virginia)

Europe/Stockholm
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Description

In a sense, the muon has been a thorn  in the side of particle physicists since its discovery in 1936.  Still, we seek answers related to questions of flavor.   Why three families?  Why are the lepton masses so different?  Who ordered that?  Experiments searching for charged lepton flavor violation seemed to run out of sensitivity gains in the 1990s.  However, a rebirth is ongoing!  A new series of experiments, led by new technologies, are poised to push sensitivities down several orders of magnitude.  Soon, the muon sector may lead to discoveries that will help answer the most fundamental questions of particle physics.