The Mu3e scintillating fiber detector R&D

Abstract

The Mu3e experiment searches for a rare lepton flavor violating μ+→e+e+e− decay and it aims at reaching an ultimate sensitivity of 10−16 on the branching fraction of the μ+→e+e+e− decay, four orders of magnitude better than the current limit B(μ+→e+e+e−)<10−12. The experiment will be hosted at the Paul Scherrer Institute (Villigen, Switzerland) which delivers the most intense low momentum continuous muon beam in the world (up to few ×108μ/s).In order to achieve this unprecedent sensitivity new detector R&D have been performed. We will report about the Scintillating Fiber (SciFi) detector R&D aiming at a detector able to measure minimum ionizing particles with a highest as possible detection efficiency (>95%), timing resolutions well below 1 ns and spatial resolution of ≈100μm. The main challenge to address such a requirements is to keep the detector as thin as possible, to minimize the multiple scattering. Then the thickness of the detector must be below 0.4% of radiation length X0. It implies that the requirements listed above will be extracted measuring just a relative low number of photoelectrons. The results of several beam tests are given, proving that the requirements for the experiment has been addressed. These studies have been supported with detailed Monte Carlo simulations from the fiber through the photosensors up to the electronics and the data acquisition.