26–31 Jul 2026
Luskin Conference Center, UCLA
US/Pacific timezone

Energy-resolved measurement of individual GeV muons from the BELLA PW Laser-Plasma Accelerator

30 Jul 2026, 14:30
20m
Legacy A (Luskin)

Legacy A

Luskin

To be considered for Working Group talk A6-Working group # 6

Speaker

Davide Terzani (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory)

Description

Recently, the possibility of LPA-produced muon beams has gained significant interest within the accelerator physics community. At BELLA, we unambiguously detected muons generated during the interaction of multi-GeV electron beams with a 4 meter-thick electron beam dump. Building on the success of that initial experiment, we conducted a second campaign to extend our diagnostic capabilities to single-muon energy measurements. To achieve this, we developed a muon telescope that operates two stacks of three silicon tracking detectors, each consisting of a single ATLAS ITkPix readout chip-based silicon detector module. The two stacks are separated by a 0.5 T permanent dipole magnet. The detector was calibrated and internally aligned through extended exposure to cosmic rays. We encased the telescope in a 10-cm lead shield to reduce the background particles. This allowed us to individually reconstruct each muon trajectory that, at a minimum, passed through all three detectors of either stack. We then determined the energy of all the muons passing through both stacks by measuring their bending angle in the magnetic field. The recorded muon energies reached up to 2.8 GeV, which, after accounting for energy losses in traversing the concrete walls, demonstrates muon production up to about 6.5 GeV at the source, consistent with the incoming electron beam energies and the Bethe-Heitler process responsible for the production of these muons.

Working group WG6

Author

Davide Terzani (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory)

Co-authors

Alex Picksley (LBNL) Anthony Gonsalves (Lawrence Berkeley national laboratory) Cameron Geddes (LBNL) Carl Schroeder Carlo Benedetti (LBNL) Eric Esarey Dr Hai-En Tsai (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory) Jens Osterhoff (Berkeley Lab) Jeroen van Tilborg John Valentine (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory) Mr Joshua Stackhouse (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory) Kei Nakamura Mr Luc Le Pottier (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory) Maria Mironova (Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (US)) Maurice Garcia-Sciveres (Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (US)) Mr Pranav Manoj (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory) Mr Raymond Li (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory) Ryan Heller (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory) Dr Stanimir Kisyov (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory) Timon Heim (Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (US))

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