BackgroundsPhysIntro

Introduction

The Mu2e Experiment is hunting for an extremely rare process, even if we are fortunate to have a "strong" signal. It is therefore critical for us to keep our backgrounds low and for these backgrounds to be well-understood. Our backgrounds include anything that can be mistakenly selected as an electron from a muon conversion. This includes electrons from other sources that have either had their momenta mis-measured, or that happen to have the same momentum as our signal electrons. But the backgrounds can also come from particles that are mis-identified as electrons. We have sources of backgrounds both from the running of the experiment (beam-related backgrounds, cascades of particles in the detector due to other interactions) and also from nature (in the form of cosmic rays, or other natural sources of radiation.) Our ability to control and understand these backgrounds is directly tied to the sensitivity of our measurement. The primary sources of background are described below.

Decay In Orbit

When a "free" muon---one that is not in the field of a nucleus---decays, there is a limit to the energy that the outgoing electron can achieve. If we consider a muon at rest, the maximum energy is achieved when the two neutrinos from the decay are produced in the opposite direction of the electron. (The total kinetic energy of the outgoing particles is determined by the difference between the muon rest mass and the masses of the outgoing particles, in order to conserve energy. To maximize the kinetic energy of the outgoing electron and satisfy conservation of momentum, we need to have the electron produced back-to-back with the two neutrinos. Any other arrangement would reduce the kinetic energy of the outgoing electron.) If we consider that we must conserve energy and momentum, this upper limit can be found by subtracting the rest mass of the electron from the rest mass of the muon, and dividing the result by two, giving an upper limit of approximately 53 MeV, or half the mass of the muon. This is safely below our signal value of 105 MeV

If the muon decays while it is in the orbit of a nucleus, however, it can exchange momentum with the nucleus. In the extreme (and rare) case where the outgoing neutrinos carry very little momentum, this can look like the two-body decay that we expect from the muon conversion signal, where the outgoing electron recoils off the nucleus. Precisely measuring the energy spectrum of these decays, which approach the signal energy, is an important part of the Mu2e analysis plan, and will allow us to predict this small, but challenging, background.

Radiative Muon Capture

We can consider muon capture in two categories: ordinary and radiative. In ordinary muon capture in Al, a neutrino and Magnesium nucleus are the products: an up quark in the proton converts to a down quark, which produces a neutron, through the exchange of a W boson with a muon. In radiative muon capture, there is also a photon produced. The photon can pair-produce, giving an electron and positron, which can then go on to interact with the Mu2e detector. This background can be controlled because the energy of the produced photon is capped at several MeV below the conversion electron signal energy---limited by the mass difference between the initial and final nuclei. Since the resolution of the Mu2e tracking detector is smaller than the difference between the signal energy and the highest energy electrons from radiative muon capture, this background can be controlled.

Delayed particles from the beamline

Most of the beam background is eliminated by the waiting period between when the proton pulse is delivered and when the Mu2e trigger will begin looking for interesting interactions, but there are cases where the beam backgrounds are delayed. Slowly moving particles, or particles produced from their interactions with matter, can interact in the detector in our live window. The energies and rates of these particles are being studied with simulation.

Radiative Pion Capture

The muon beam that is transported to the stopping target will have some pion contamination. The pions can also be captured by the nuclei in the stoping target, and a few percent of the time this capture process will result in the emission of a photon. The energy of the photons peaks at nearly the same energy as our signal electron. If the photon pair produces (forming an electron-positron pair), and if the energy is shared asymmetrically between the electron and positron, the electron energy can be similar to that of our signal electrons. The primary technique for reducing this background is the waiting period between the delivery of the proton pulse and the live window of Mu2e data-taking, since radiative pion capture is a process that will occur quite soon after the beam pulse, whereas the muon to electron conversion can occur much later.