Technical design of the phase I Mu3e experiment

Authors:

K Arndt, H Augustin, P Baesso, N Berger, F Berg, C Betancourt, D Bortoletto, A Bravar, K Briggl, D vom Bruch, A Buonaura, F Cadoux, C Chavez Barajas, H Chen, K Clark, P Cooke, S Corrodi, A Damyanova, Y Demets, S Dittmeier, P Eckert, F Ehrler, D Fahrni, L Gerritzen, J Goldstein, D Gottschalk, C Grab, R Gredig, A Groves, J Hammerich, U Hartenstein, U Hartmann, H Hayward, A Herkert, G Hesketh, S Hetzel, M Hildebrandt, Z Hodge, A Hofer, Qh Huang, S Hughes, L Huth, Dm Immig, T Jones, M Jones, H-C Kästli, M Köppel, P-R Kettle, M Kiehn, S Kilani

Abstract:

The Mu3e experiment aims to find or exclude the lepton flavour violating decay $\mu \rightarrow eee$ at branching fractions above $10^{-16}$. A first phase of the experiment using an existing beamline at the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) is designed to reach a single event sensitivity of $2\cdot 10^{-15}$. We present an overview of all aspects of the technical design and expected performance of the phase~I Mu3e detector. The high rate of up to $10^{8}$ muon decays per second and the low momenta of the decay electrons and positrons pose a unique set of challenges, which we tackle using an ultra thin tracking detector based on high-voltage monolithic active pixel sensors combined with scintillating fibres and tiles for precise timing measurements.