English

The Mu3e Experiment: Status and Short-Term Plans

High Energy Physics - Experiment 2025-01-27 v1 Instrumentation and Detectors

Abstract

Mu3e is an experiment currently under construction at the Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland, designed to search for the Lepton Flavor Violating (LFV) decay μ+e+ee+\mu^+ \rightarrow e^+e^-e^+. In extensions of the Standard Model (SM) that account for neutrino masses, this decay is theoretically allowed but occurs only through extremely rare loop processes, with a predicted branching ratio of approximately O(1054)\mathcal{O}(10^{-54}). Such a small probability implies that any observation of this decay would provide clear evidence for physics beyond the SM. The Mu3e experiment aims to probe the μ+e+ee+\mu^+ \rightarrow e^+e^-e^+ decay with a sensitivity of approximately O(1015)\mathcal{O}(10^{-15}) in its Phase-1 and plans to achieve a sensitivity of O(1016)\mathcal{O}(10^{-16}) after future upgrades. To reach its Phase-1 ambitious goals, Mu3e is going to use the most intense continuous muon beam in the world, generating 108^{8} muon stops per second in the target placed at the center of the Mu3e. Mu3e will use three main technologies for particle detection. The tracking will done through ultra-thin (50 - 70 μm\mu m) pixel detectors based on MuPix11 sensors. These are high-voltage monolithic active pixel sensors (HV-MAPS) with a \sim 23~μ\mum spatial resolution. The timing will be done through scintillating fibres (\sim 250 ps) and tiles (\sim 40 ps), coupled to silicon photomultipliers and read out by MuTRiG3 ASICs. A triggerless DAQ system based on FPGAs will collect data from the detectors, which will then undergo reconstruction in a GPU filter farm. The assembly of the detectors has started, with a detector commissioning beam time planned for 2025. This document reports on the status of the construction, installation, and data-taking plans for the near future.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2501.14667,
  title  = {The Mu3e Experiment: Status and Short-Term Plans},
  author = {Robert Mihai Amarinei},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2501.14667},
  year   = {2025}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-28T21:16:35.933Z