The Production and Discovery of True Muonium in Fixed-Target Experiments

Andrzej Banburski, Philip Schuster

Published 2012-06-18Version 1

Upcoming fixed-target experiments designed to search for new sub-GeV forces will also have sensitivity to the never before observed True Muonium atom, a bound state of a muon and anti-muon. We describe the production and decay characteristics of True Muonium relevant to these experiments. Importantly, we find that secondary production mechanisms dominate over primary production for the long-lived 2S and 2P states, leading to total yields an order of magnitude larger than naive estimates previously suggested. We present yield estimates for True Muonium as a function of energy fraction and decay length, useful for guiding future experimental studies. Discovery and measurement prospects appear very favorable.