No Arabic abstract
The MEG experiment took data at the Paul Scherrer Institute in the years 2009--2013 to test the violation of the lepton flavour conservation law, which originates from an accidental symmetry that the Standard Model of elementary particle physics has, and published the most stringent limit on the charged lepton flavour violating decay ${mu}^+ rightarrow {rm e}^+ gamma$: BR(${mu}^+ rightarrow {rm e}^+ gamma$) $<4.2 times 10^{-13}$ at 90% confidence level. The MEG detector has been upgraded in order to reach a sensitivity of $6times10^{-14}$. The basic principle of MEG II is to achieve the highest possible sensitivity using the full muon beam intensity at the Paul Scherrer Institute ($7times10^{7}$ muons/s) with an upgraded detector. The main improvements are better rate capability of all sub-detectors and improved resolutions while keeping the same detector concept. In this paper, we present the current status of the preparation, integration and commissioning of the MEG II detector in the recent engineering runs.
A search for the decay mu -> e gamma, performed at PSI and based on data from the initial three months of operation of the MEG experiment, yields an upper limit on the branching ratio of BR(mu -> e gamma) < 2.8 x 10**-11 (90% C.L.). This corresponds to the measurement of positrons and photons from ~ 10**14 stopped mu-decays by means of a superconducting positron spectrometer and a 900 litre liquid xenon photon detector.
The MEG (Mu to Electron Gamma) experiment has been running at the Paul Scherrer Institut (PSI), Switzerland since 2008 to search for the decay meg by using one of the most intense continuous $mu^+$ beams in the world. This paper presents the MEG components: the positron spectrometer, including a thin target, a superconducting magnet, a set of drift chambers for measuring the muon decay vertex and the positron momentum, a timing counter for measuring the positron time, and a liquid xenon detector for measuring the photon energy, position and time. The trigger system, the read-out electronics and the data acquisition system are also presented in detail. The paper is completed with a description of the equipment and techniques developed for the calibration in time and energy and the simulation of the whole apparatus.
The OPERA experiment has discovered the tau neutrino appearance in the CNGS muon neutrino beam, in agreement with the 3 neutrino flavour oscillation hypothesis. The OPERA neutrino interaction target, made of Emulsion Cloud Chamber, was particularly efficient in the reconstruction of electromagnetic showers. Moreover, thanks to the very high granularity of the emulsion films, showers induced by electrons can be distinguished from those induced by $pi^0$s, thus allowing the detection of charged current interactions of electron neutrinos. In this paper the results of the search for electron neutrino events using the full dataset are reported. An improved method for the electron neutrino energy estimation is exploited. Data are compatible with the 3 neutrino flavour mixing model expectations and are used to set limits on the oscillation parameters of the 3+1 neutrino mixing model, in which an additional mass eigenstate $m_{4}$ is introduced. At high $Delta m^{2}_{41}$ $( gtrsim 0.1~textrm{eV}^{2})$, an upper limit on $sin^2 2theta_{mu e}$ is set to 0.021 at 90% C.L. and $Delta m^2_{41} gtrsim 4 times 10^{-3}~textrm{eV}^{2}$ is excluded for maximal mixing in appearance mode.
The analysis of a combined data set, totaling 3.6 times 10^14 stopped muons on target, in the search for the lepton flavour violating decay mu^+ -> e^+ gamma is presented. The data collected by the MEG experiment at the Paul Scherrer Institut show no excess of events compared to background expectations and yield a new upper limit on the branching ratio of this decay of 5.7 times 10^-13 (90% confidence level). This represents a four times more stringent limit than the previous world best limit set by MEG.
We have searched for a light vector boson $U$, the possible carrier of a dark force, with the KLOE detector at the DA$Phi$NE epm collider, motivated by astrophysical evidence for the presence of dark matter in the universe. Using epm collisions collected with an integrated luminosity of $239.3$~pb$^{-1}$, we look for a dimuon mass peak in the reaction epmto$mu^+ mu^-$gam, corresponding to the decay $Utomu^+mu^-$. We find no evidence for a $U$ vector boson signal. We set a 90% CL upper limit for the mixing parameter squared between the photon and the $U$ boson of 1.6$times$10$^{-5}$ to 8.6$times$10$^{-7}$ for the mass region $520<m_{rm U}<980$ MeV.