Mu3e experiment: a search for lepton flavour violation in the decay of a muon to three electrons

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The expected impact of the proposed can be summarized in two main areas. First in terms of the direct economic and technological outputs which support industry and R&D outside of our own research base. Second in terms of the societal impact beyond the research itself.

The economic and technological impact is driven by the strong way in which this proposal links into R&D activities of the different groups in the development of novel HV-CMOS pixel sensors, ultra-low-mass solutions for mechanical supports, electrical services and cooling and fast electronic for high bandwidth data processing. In working directly with UK and worldwide companies to deliver technological solutions to meet the very challenging demand of this experiment, valuable expertise will be transferred from researchers and engineers on the project to these companies.

Just as the planar silicon silicon technology we developed for the LHC, HL-LHC and other particle physics experiments is today finding its way into new applications; for example in proton therapy applications, neutron detection or high resolution mass spectrometry. We fully expect that as HV-CMOS sensors are likely to replace planar silicon sensors in future particle physics experiments, they will do the same, a bit further down the line, for such commercial applications. The detectors similar to the ones developed for Mu3e, for example, could offer a lower cost alternative to the planar sensors used in these applications today. An added benefit of the new HV-MAPS sensors and the high bandwidth daq solutions developed to read them out, for such applications is that their implementation in new applications requires substantially less infrastructure than planar sensors (no separate readout ASICs, no custom front-end electronics, etc) whilst offering a comparable performance. These aspects in combination with the reduced cost per sensor of the CMOS process also open the door to the development of custom solutions for new applications.

Our societal impact is manifested through outreach activities and through generating public interest in science in general. A positive result from the experiment would constitute a major breakthrough in fundamental physics and would be expected to generate substantial public interest. Previous important discoveries received intensive attention from the press, had a substantial impact in raising public interest in fundamental physics and encouraged young people to consider physics as a degree topic or to take it as a topic at the earlier stages of their education.

The groups involved in the proposal have a strong track record on outreach activities, with members of this proposal participating in these programmes. We will use the work done for Mu3e to showcase how exciting science is both at a fundamental and technological level. Activities in which we will participate will include: programmes focussed on school children and their parents; events organised to showcase technology developments to industry; participation in science exhibitions, etc.