Charged Lepton Flavor Violation at Fermilab: The Mu2e Experiment

Dr. Kevin Lynch from the Department of Earth and Physical Sciences presents Charged Lepton Flavor Violation at Fermilab: The Mu2e Experiment.

Particle physics sits on the threshold of a revolution: our current theory is phenomenally accurate and successful, but is known to be incomplete.  All attempts to fix these known problems predict new particles and effects that will be observable in the coming generation of experiments. His seminar presentation will focus on the work being done by York College scientists to contribute to this developing story.

Dr. Kevin Lynch has been teaching at York since the Fall of 2010.  He earned his SB in Physics at MIT in 1996, then went to Boston University, earning an MA in Physics in 1998, and a PhD in Theoretical Particle Physics in 2002. He moved down two floors in the same building to work for another research group, doing Experimental Particle Physics as a Postdoctoral Research Associate. He has been doing work in precision muon physics ever since.  Until 2010, he mostly worked on various muon lifetime experiments at the Paul Scherrer Institut (PSI) in Switzerland, and since then he has mostly worked on experiments at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) an hour west of Chicago. His group at York primarily works on Mu2e, a $300million project involving over 200 scientists and engineers from a few dozen institutions in about half a dozen countries.  My expertise lies in computer simulations, and detector control and data acquisition, although most days the only physics he needs to use is what he teaches in University Physics I and II! His group has two faculty, two postdocs, three graduate students, and a constantly evolving cast of undergraduates. He has also collaborate with industry on a project looking at using muons to catalyze fusion events in a reactor to generate commercially viable, clean nuclear power.

Outside work, He been married for 22 years to a Materials Scientist who work in the optics industry. They have three young daughters, a tank-full of fish, and live in the suburbs of New Jersey.