Seminars and Journal Clubs

Precise measurement of the muon lifetime with the FAST Experiment: First

by Dr Chiara Casella

Europe/Brussels
e.349

e.349

Description
The goal of the FAST experiment, at the Paul Sherrer Institute (PSI), is the precise measurement of the muon lifetime $\tau_\mu$, to a precision of about 4 ps (2 ppm), one order of magnitude improvement on the present world average. After including all experimental and theoretical errors, this represents a precision measurement of the Fermi coupling constant $G_F$, one of the fundamental parameters of the Standard Model, that has to be fixed for it to become predictive. The experiment will be described and its first physics results will be be presented, based on few $10^{10}$ events collected in December 2006, providing a new measurement of the muon lifetime and $G_F$ that is competitive with the current world average.
Slides