Physics Colloquium: Can wobbling muons probe physics beyond the standard model? Fermilab’s Muon g-2 Run 1 results

The Department of Physics is pleased to welcome Dr. Jessica Esquivel for an in-person Colloquium presentation on Thursday, April 27, 2023. Dr. Esquivel is an Associate Scientist at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory working on the Muon g-2 Experiment which is tasked with observing physics beyond the standard model. She is one of ~150 black women with a PhD in physics in the country and the 2nd black woman to graduate with a PhD in physics from Syracuse University and has experience navigating spaces where she is “the first” or “the only”. Her graduate research focused on studying ghostly particles called neutrinos interacting in the MicroBooNE Experiment using
innovative machine learning techniques like those used in facial recognition software. She received her bachelors in Electrical Engineering and Applied Physics from St. Mary’s University in San Antonio, TX.

Abstract

On April 7th 2021, Fermilab’s Muon g-2 experiment announced its first results of the precision measurement of the anomalous muon magnetic moment based on its 2018 Run-1 dataset. These results align with the Brookhaven National Laboratory experimental value and the combined values increase the tension between experiment and theory from 3.7 to 4.2 sigma. This talk will give an overview of the Fermilab Muon g-2 experiment, discuss the steps necessary to precisely measure wobbling muons, why this result has the physics community abuzz, and what’s next.