Muon g-2 experiment places new constraints on a forbidden property of muons
A year after its final muon magnetic anomaly announcement, the Muon g-2 collaboration reports a new measurement of a different property of the muon: its electric dipole moment. The work is published on the arXiv preprint server.
In 2019, the Muon g-2 experiment at Fermilab reported a new measurement of a muon's electric dipole moment (EDM). This analysis utilized 25% of the experiment's data and is the most sensitive search for a muon EDM to date. The experiment, hosted by Fermilab since 2008, involves a 50-foot storage ring where muons circle nearly at the speed of light.
The muon's precession speed, influenced by a magnetic field, is related to its magnetic dipole moment, while the EDM refers to a vertical component of the wobble caused by the muon's electric field. If a nonzero EDM exists, it could provide evidence for new physics and help explain the matter-antimatter asymmetry in the universe.
While the g-2 measurement uses the muon's horizontal wobble, the EDM refers to the vertical component. The Muon g-2 collaboration found the beam's specifications were not met, but the trackers they designed played a crucial role in mapping the beam profile and extracting both the g-2 and EDM results.
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