Kaplan Invited To Present at 3rd International Conference on New Frontiers in Physics

Daniel Kaplan, professor of physics and director of the IIT Center for Accelerator and Particle Physics, is invited to deliver two presentations at the 3rd International Conference on New Frontiers in Physics in Crete, July 28 until August 6. The first presentation, "Muon Colliders and Neutrino Factories," will explore how muon colliders and neutrino factories are important options for the future of high energy physics and will describe progress being made towards their realization. The second presentation, "Measuring Antimatter Gravity with Muonium," describes a seemingly feasible new technique for measuring antimatter gravity that is being explored.

Muon Colliders and Neutrino Factories

Abstract

Muon colliders and neutrino factories are attractive options for future facilities aimed at achieving the highest lepton-antilepton collision energies and precision measurements of parameters of the Higgs boson and the neutrino mixing matrix. The performance and cost of these depend on how well a beam of muons can be cooled. Recent progress in muon cooling design studies and prototype tests nourishes the hope that such facilities can be built starting in the coming decade. The status of the key technologies and their various demonstration experiments is summarized.

Measuring Antimatter Gravity with Muonium

Abstract

The gravitational acceleration of antimatter, gbar, has never been directly measured and could bear importantly on our understanding of gravity, the possible existence of a fifth force, and the nature and early history of the universe. Only two avenues for such a measurement appear to be feasible: antihydrogen and muonium. The muonium measurement requires a novel, monoenergetic, low-velocity, horizontal muonium beam directed at an atom interferometer. The precision three-grating interferometer can be produced in silicon nitride or ultrananoscrystalline diamond using state-of-the-art nanofabrication. The required precision alignment and calibration at the picometer level also appear to be feasible. With 100 nm grating pitch, a 10 percent measurement of gbar can be made using some months of surface-muon beam time, and 1 percent or better measurement with a correspondingly larger exposure. This could constitute the first gravitational measurement of leptonic matter, of second-generation matter and, possibly, the first measurement of the gravitational acceleration of antimatter.