Testing Lepton Flavor Universality with Rare Pion Decays

Dr. Saúl Cuen Rochín, Universidad Autónoma de Sinaloa, Culiacán, Sin., México


The Standard Model (SM) of particle physics is the best available theoretical framework to predict the subatomic interactions between the fundamental elements of known matter. The PIENU experiment at TRIUMF makes a precise measurement for one of the SM\u2019s best calculated predictions involving the force that governs radioactive decays. If a measurement is consistent with the SM, better constraints can be set on theories which extend the SM. In some instances, these constraints can far exceed the reach of direct searches at high energy colliding beam facilities like the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. Most remarkably, a deviation from the SM expectation could imply the presence of new physics effects not included in the SM. This work describes the analysis of a dataset including 3 million pi -> e + nue events. Major experimental systematic problems have been solved, allowing for increased precision by a factor of two over PIENU\u2019s previous measurement from 2015.

Additionally, a new generation experiment of rare pion decay measurement to reach SM calculation levels is under consideration and the plan was presented at SNOWMASS 2020.

https://www.snowmass21.org/docs/files/summaries/RF/SNOWMASS21-RF2_RF3-048.p df [www.snowmass21.org]

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/69938 [hdl.handle.net]