The muon g-2 experiment at Fermilab aims to measure the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon to unprecedented accuracy. Dirac famously predicted that, for electrons and muons, the factor relating the magnetic moment to spin would have a value of 2. This is very close to the measured value but as experiments were refined it became clear that g differed from 2 by a significant amount and was referred to as 'anomalous'. With the development of Quantum Field Theory, the reasons for the anomaly were understood and increasingly precise calculations and measurements have lead to a triumph of particle physics: The agreement between the measured value of the anomalous magnetic moment of the electron and the theoretical prediction (which involves the full panoply of the Standard Model) is good at the parts per trillion level. But... For the muon it is different: the measured and predicted values differ with a significance of about 3.5σ. The most recent experimental values come from the E821 experiment which measured g by looking at the decay of muons stored in a ring at Brookhaven National Laboratory. Even though 3.5σ is not regarded as enough to confirm a real discrepancy, the paper announcing the measurement has since become the second most cited paper in the history of particle physics. Why? Deviations from the Standard Model prediction are a strong indicator of new physics. Any new particles should contibute to the anomaly. Furthermore they will do this in proportion to (ml/mnew)2. That means that the muon anomalous magnetic moment is much more senstitive to new particles than that of the electron: the observed parts per trillion agreement in the electron case is not at all inconsistent with the muon discrepancy. Precision Precession The E-989 muon g-2 experiment at Fermilab intends to measure the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon to 0.14 ppm, a fourfold improvement over the previous Brookhaven E821 experiment. The experiment will use the Fermilab beam complex to prepare a custom muon beam that will be injected into the relocated Brookhaven muon storage ring. The goal is a factor of 20 increase in statistics and a significant reduction in systematic uncertainties compared to the BNL experiment.

You can find the Liverpool g-2 page at Divison web site.

The Search for New Physics at and Beyond the Energy Frontier The LHCb experiment at CERN in Geneva is dedicated to the search for New Physics at the LHC. The experiment is looking for the effects of New Physics in "quantum loops" in the heavy quark sector, enabling it to search beyond the energy frontier. LHCb is instrumented in the forward region and provides physicists with the best vertex resolution, particle identification and triggering of any of the LHC experiments. It is sensitive to enormously rare events and provides unique high precision measurements of processes sensitive to New Physics and is making precision tests of the Standard Model and QCD in this hitherto unexplored regime. Part of the region provides overlap with ATLAS and CMS, the rest is unique to LHCb. Liverpool are leading the measurement of electroweak boson production in muon final states, studying the production of top quarks, and investigating the measurement of A_FB, the forward backward asymmetry of Z bosons. The properties of the decays of the W bosons are also measured and these are also used as senstive tests for lepton universality. We are also innovating, together with our colleagues in the theory department to use the heavy quark decays to set very general limits on all beyond the standard model processes. The design and construction of an upgraded detector to replace the VELO is a current project at Liverpool. This will involve the use of pixel rather than strip sensors and Liverpool technology is expected to form the heart of the sensor devices.

You can find the Liverpool LHCb page on the Divison web site.