WNPPC2024 - 61st Winter Nuclear Particle Physics Conference

Searching for New Physics with Pions

18 Feb 2024, 08:30

30m

Salon AB (Hotel Chateau Bromont)

Invited Oral Physics Beyond the Standard Model Morning 5 - Feb. 18, 2024

Speaker

Chloé Malbrunot (TRIUMF)

Description

Pions are fantastic tools to look for new physics! The PIENU experiment at TRIUMF has provided, to date, the most precise experimental determination of $R_{e/\mu }^{\pi }$, the ratio of pions decaying to positrons relative to muons. While more than an order of magnitude less precise that the Standard Model (SM) calculation, the PIENU result is a precise test of the universality of charged leptons interaction, a key principle of the Standard Model (SM), constrains a large range of new physics scenario, and allows dedicated searches for exotics such as sterile neutrinos.

I’ll go over a short overview of $R_{e/\mu }^{\pi }$ measurements and their entangled history with the development of the SM and introduce the next generation precision pion decay experiment in the making: PIONEER! This newly proposed experiment aims at pushing the boundaries of precision on $R_{e/\mu }^{\pi }$ and expanding the physics reach by improving on the measurement of the very rare pion beta decay ${\pi }^{+}\to {\pi }^0{e}^{+}\nu$. This will provide a new and competitive input to the determination of $|V_{ud}|$, an element of the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa (CKM) quark-mixing matrix.

Presentation materials

PIONEER_Malbrunot_18Feb2024_WNPPC.pdf