The Symposium on Lepton Moments brings together the communities from atomic physics, nuclear physics and particle physics that are interested in magnetic dipole moments, electric dipole moments and the transition moments that could lead to lepton flavor violation in lepton decays. With the apparent disagreement between the muon magnetic dipole moment and the Standard‐Model theory, all of these topics are at the forefront of the search in precision measurements for physics beyond the Standard Model. Thus this meeting addresses key issues in physics: The search for physics beyond the Standard Model; the searches for new sources of violations of Charge Conjugation combined with Parity, which is necessary for the predominance of matter over anti‐matter in the universe. These participant costs will permit young scientists, graduate students and young postdoctoral scientists to attend this meeting.
The fourth International Symposium on Lepton Moments was held 19-22 July 2010. http://g2pc1.bu.edu/lept10/ The international leaders in the field of magnetic and electric dipole moments attended, including two Nobel Laureates. These experts gave theoretical and experimental presentations on electric and magnetic dipole moments of subatomic particles. The remarkably successful theory of the subatomic world (called the Standard Model) explains almost all of the measurements made in subatomic physics over the past 40 years. There are however puzzles that exist, which show that the Standard Model is incomplete. One avenue for searching for physics beyond the Standard Model is related to three fundamental symmetries in nature, parity (roughly the mirror image), time reversal (which relates physical processes to the same process running backward in time) and charge conjugation (relating the properties of particles and their anti-particles). Our world is made of matter, not antimatter, but in the early universe there should have been equal amounts of matter and anti-matter. The evolution to a world made of matter requires a violation of the combination of parity and charge conjugation (CP violation). While we have discovered one source of CP violation, it is insufficient to explain why we are made of matter and not anti-matter. One of the forefronts of sub-atomic physics research is the search for evidence of new sources of CP violation. A significant portion of the meeting was devoted to the search for electric dipole moments of subatomic particles. The discovery of an electric dipole moment would herald discovery of a new source of CP violation, and could help explain the predominance of matter over antimatter in the universe. Similarly, the magnetic dipole moments of the electron, and its heavier sibling the muon, are being measured to ever-greater precision, since there is hint in the measurement of the muon magnetic moment that new forces not included in the Standard Model could be at play. This award permitted 18 young scientists (16 graduate students, 2 post-doctoral fellows) to attend as full participants. Two of them gave oral presentations, and the rest gave poster presentations. Full conference expenses were covered for 18 of these, and the conference fee was covered for an additional 8. Because of this award, 40% of the participants were young scientists, compared with 20% at the previous meeting in 2006. This support was very important for the long-term health of this field, since training the next generation of leaders is critical.
