This award funds the research activities of Professor Brandon Murakami of Rhode Island College.
This project concerns rare lepton decays and their possible appearance at the Large Hadron Collider (at CERN) and at the MEG experiment (at the Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland). As part of this research, Professor Murakami intends to focus on the decay of the muon to an electron-plus-photon state, a process which is being studied by the MEG experiment and which is forbidden by the Standard Model of particle physics. For this reason, any measurement of this process is an unambiguous indication of physics beyond the Standard Model --- particularly scenarios currently under investigation as potential solutions to the gauge hierarchy problem. Professor Murakami plans to investigate all theoretical issues concerning this rare decay and its potential experimental observation, focusing on those involving weak-scale supersymmetry.
This project is also envisioned to include significant broader impacts. Professor Murakami has been contributing to the overall science awareness in Rhode Island with public lectures, participation in the NSF-funded TheoryNet program which partners theoretical particle physicists with high-school classrooms, and offers a freshman-level course on particle physics and cosmology, designed to recruit undergraduates into physics. He also participates in the Department of Education's "Upward Bound" program. As part of this project, the PI intends to continue all of these activities.
