Muon g-2 Experiment To Start Run

Everything old is new again!

The old muon g-2 experiment that was at Brookhaven was taken apart, and rebuilt at Fermilab. Now, after the logistic challenge of moving the huge magnet from there, and after the long hard work of rebuilding the facility, the muon g-2 is now about ready to start its run.

The facility is now better than ever, and physicists are hoping that there will be an anomaly in the measurement, indicating new physics beyond the Standard Model.

In 2013, the g-2 team lugged the experiment on a 5000-kilometer odyssey from Brookhaven to Fermilab, taking the ring by barge around the U.S. eastern seaboard and up the Mississippi River. Since then, they have made the magnetic field three times more uniform, and at Fermilab, they can generate far purer muon beams. "It's really a whole new experiment," says Lee Roberts, a g-2 physicist at Boston University. "Everything is better."

Over 3 years, the team aims to collect 21 times more data than during its time at Brookhaven, Roberts says. By next year, Hertzog says, the team hopes to have enough data for a first result, which could push the discrepancy above 5 σ.

Good luck, everyone!

Zz.