Designing, Optimising and Validating the Beam Measurement Programme at the New Intense Muon Beam Line for the COMET Muon-to-Electron Search Experiment

COMET (Coherent Muon-to-Electron Transition) is an experiment with major European involvement which will search for mu-e conversion, improving the sensitivity by 10,000 times compared to previous searches.

In the Standard Model of Particle Physics (SM), muons simply cannot spontaneously turn into electrons, but tiny deviations of reality from the SM can cause this, perhaps at the level of a few muons in 1,000,000,000,000,000,000.

Any observation would be a seminal discovery that redefines our understanding of the Universe, and complements other searches for breakthroughs in particle physics, such as at high-energy colliders.The quality of the novel intense muon beam is key to the ultimate sensitivity of COMET, and therefore the Beam Measurement Programme (BMP) once the beam is completed in 2022 will be a defining factor.

I have been deeply involved in the design and construction of the detectors for COMET since 2012, as an MSc student.

The ideas for the BMP grew from this work, but currently only a conceptual plan for it exists.In this research, I will develop the BMP beam and detector configurations, using modern methods to optimise the configurations to be used and analyse the data.

The optimisation of the design of the Beam Blocker, a BMP component which actively moderates the beam to allow high-intensity measurements, is particularly crucial.Imperial College HEP has world-class expertise in areas such as Machine Learning and Bayesian Optimisation, and is the ideal group to train and work with.

Computational methods alone will not suffice for full BMP optimisation, so I will conduct a beam experiment at PSI in Switzerland, to test prototypes and validate and provide input to the calculations.

London is also the perfect place to practise physics outreach in English.This research will produce a clear and optimised BMP plan for COMET, allowing it to maximise its discovery potential, and the novel methods employed will contribute to the scientific community.