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The dominant muon decay mode (sometimes called the Michel decay after Louis Michel) is the simplest possible: the muon decays to an electron, an electron antineutrino, and a muon neutrino. Antimuons, in mirror fashion, most often decay to the corresponding antiparticles: a positron , an electron neutrino, and a muon antineutrino.
The Mu to E Gamma (MEG) is a particle physics experiment dedicated to measuring the decay of the muon into an electron and a photon, a decay mode which is heavily suppressed in the Standard Model by lepton flavour conservation, but enhanced in supersymmetry and grand unified theories. [1]
In particle physics, a lepton is an elementary particle of half-integer spin (spin 1 / 2 ) that does not undergo strong interactions. [1] Two main classes of leptons exist: charged leptons (also known as the electron-like leptons or muons), including the electron, muon, and tauon, and neutral leptons, better known as neutrinos.
Charged pions most often decay into muons and muon neutrinos, while neutral pions generally decay into gamma rays. The exchange of virtual pions, along with vector, rho and omega mesons, provides an explanation for the residual strong force between nucleons.
(For comparison's sake, another muon at rest on Earth can be considered, called muon-S. Therefore, its decay time in S is shorter than that of muon-S′, while it is longer in S′.) In S, muon-S′ has a longer decay time than muon-S. Therefore, muon-S' has sufficient time to pass the proper length of the atmosphere in order to reach Earth.
Others decay into photons, subsequently producing electromagnetic cascades. Hence, next to photons, electrons and positrons usually dominate in air showers. These particles as well as muons can be easily detected by many types of particle detectors, such as cloud chambers , bubble chambers , water-Cherenkov , or scintillation detectors.
Muonium is usually studied by muon spin rotation, in which the muonium atom's spin precesses in a magnetic field applied transverse to the muon spin direction (since muons are typically produced in a spin-polarized state from the decay of pions), and by avoided level crossing (ALC), which is also called level crossing resonance (LCR). [5]
[1] [2] The ortho-state of true muonium (i.e. the state with parallel alignment of the muon and antimuon spins) is expected to be relatively long-lived (with a lifetime of 1.8 × 10 −12 s), and decay predominantly to an e + e − pair, which makes it possible for LHCb experiment at CERN to observe it with the dataset collected by 2025.