DIMUS: Super-Compact Dimuonium Spectroscopy Collider at Fermilab

TL;DR

DIMUS is a proposed compact collider at Fermilab designed to produce and study dimuonium atoms, enabling precision tests of QED and searches for new physics involving muons with a cost-effective, fast, and high-luminosity setup.

Contribution

This paper proposes a novel, compact collider design at Fermilab for efficient dimuonium production, leveraging existing infrastructure for fundamental physics research.

Findings

Estimated production of 0.5 million dimuons per year.

Design achieves high luminosity with modest modifications to existing facilities.

Enables precision tests of QED and new physics searches involving muons.

Abstract

While dimuonium $(\mu^+\mu^-)$ has not yet been observed, it is of utmost fundamental interest. By virtue of the larger mass, dimuonium has greater sensitivity to beyond the standard model effects than its cousins positronium or muonium, both discovered long ago, while not suffering from large QCD uncertainties. Dimuonium atoms can be created in $e^+e^-$ collisions with large longitudinal momentum, allowing them to decay a small distance away from the beam crossing point and avoid prompt backgrounds. We envision a unique cost-effective and fast-timeline opportunity for copious production of $(\mu^+\mu^-)$ atoms at the production threshold via a modest modification of Fermilab's existing FAST/NML facility to arrange collisions of 408 MeV electrons and positrons at a 75$^{\rm o}$ angle. This compact 23 m circumference collider (DIMUS) will allow for precision tests of QED and open the door for searches for new physics coupled to the muon. Fermilab's FAST/NML is perfectly suited for DIMUS as there are existing SRF accelerators and infrastructure, capable of producing high energy, high current electron and positron beams, sufficient for $O(10^{32})\mathrm{cm}^2\mathrm{s}^{-1}$ luminosity and $\sim$0.5 million dimuons per year. The expansion will require installation of a second SRF cryomodule, positron production and accumulation system, fast injection/extraction kickers and two small circumference intersecting rings. An approximately meter-sized detector with several layers of modern pixelated silicon detector and crystal-based electromagnetic calorimeters will ensure observation of the decays of dimuonium to electron-positron pairs in presence of the Bhabba scattering background. An expansion of the system to would extend the physics program of DIMUS to include precision studies of rare processes with muons, pions, and $\eta$ mesons produced in $e^{+}e^{-}$ collisions.