Muon colliders in the news

Symmetry, April 10, 2024

In December, the Particle Physics Project Prioritization Panel, called P5, released its recommendations for the future of the field, based on the input from the Snowmass process. ... “At the end of the path is an unparalleled global facility on US soil,” the report reads. “This is our Muon Shot.” 

CERN Courier, March 27, 2024

The physics landscape has changed. We have not seen signs of new particles above the Higgs-boson mass. Typical limits are now well above 1 TeV based on LHC data, which means we need to look for the new physics that we anticipate at higher energies. The consensus during the recent US Snowmass process was that we should aim for 10 TeV in the centre-of-mass. A muon collider has the feature that its expected wall-plug power scales very favourably as you go to the multi-TeV scale. 

Science, March 28, 2024

A muon collider could be much smaller and cheaper than a functionally equivalent proton collider, advocates say. It could fit on the 2750-hectare campus of the United States’s dedicated particle physics lab, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), enabling the U.S. to reclaim the lead in the continuing competition for the highest energy collider. 

New York Times, December 7, 2023

A “muon shot” aims to study the basic forces of the cosmos. But meager federal budgets could limit its ambitions. Particle physicists should begin laying the groundwork for a revolutionary particle collider that could be built on American soil, a committee of scientists wrote in a draft report on the future of particle physics released on Thursday. 

Scientific American, August 28, 2023

Particle physicists are unlikely evangelists, but in papers, at conferences and with T-shirts, stickers and memes, many of them are spreading the good word of a muon collider—a next-generation machine that would smash together muons, the massive cousins of electrons. In a 2021 manifesto, “The Muon Smasher’s Guide,” the particle partisans laid out their case. 

Nature, August 8, 2022

Momentum is growing to build a particle collider in the United States that smashes muons — heavier cousins of electrons. The collider would follow the world’s next major accelerator, which is yet to be built, and physicists hope it would discover new elementary particles. Although muons’ short-lived...

APS News, November 2021

As the discovery of the Higgs boson approaches its 10-year anniversary, physicists are busy building on its legacy. Although it was a tour de force, the experimental confirmation left many mysteries still unsolved. To find a way forward, physicists gathered virtually for a symposium at the 2021 APS April Meeting to discuss the potential for a muon collider—an ambitious new machine that could help answer many questions.

Symmetry, February 5, 2020

Scientists have announced a breakthrough that could be key to the creation of a powerful new kind of particle collider. As reported in the journal Nature, the Muon Ionization Cooling Experiment, or MICE, has for the first time demonstrated the successful taming of a beam of particles called muons through a process called transverse ionization cooling.