Discovering True Muonium

University Of Cincinnati Main Campus, Cincinnati OH

Investigators

Abstract

One of the major intellectual achievements of the 20th century was the development of the Standard Model (SM) of particle physics. This model succeeded in classifying all of the elementary particles known at the time into a hierarchy of groups having similar quantum properties. The validity of this model to date has been confirmed by the discovery of the Higgs boson at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the CERN laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland. However, the Standard Model as it currently exists leaves open many questions about the universe. These include why matter dominates over anti-matter in the Universe (CP violation), the values of the masses of the fundamental constituents of matter, the quarks and the leptons, the size of the mixings among the quarks, and separately among the leptons, and the properties of dark matter. Most explanations require the presence of new forces and the development of concepts that now constitute what we call physics Beyond the Standard Model (BSM). This award supports research that addresses those questions that dominate BSM physics. The research will be carried out at the LHC, which is the premier High Energy Physics particle accelerator in the world and one of the foremost facilities for answering these BSM questions. LHCb is the first experiment designed specifically to study the decays of hadrons containing b or c quarks at a hadron collider. The goal of LHCb is to identify new physics in nature by examining the properties of hadrons containing these quarks. New physics, or new forces, are manifest by particles, as yet to be discovered, which would modify decay rates and CP violating asymmetries, and thus allow new phenomena to be observed indirectly. This award will allow the study of rare decays of heavy quark systems in LHCb. The work will concentrate on low mass electron and muon pairs where BSM could manifest itself. The newly upgraded LHCb detector now allows unprecedented data levels providing new paths to understanding recent anomalies in lepton universality. This new data set will allow a search for dark photons and other new light particles and possibly discover true muonium, a bound state of a muon and an anti-muon. This award will also allow the development of a novel curriculum for understanding implicit bias, both in the context of particle physics and society. This course will be taught to high school, undergraduate, and graduate students. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.