TWIST Summer Student: Dan Mazur

Typically, TWIST uses a highly polarised beam of positive muons to measure the free muon decay spectrum and test the results against the standard model prediction. When a negative muon beam is used, however, the TWIST experimental apparatus can also be used to make measurements of the negative muons as they decay from atomic bound states of a target material.

This report documents the first feasibility studies of doing negative muon decay measurements using the TWIST experimental setup. I give a thorough discussion of the conditions under which preliminary data from negative muon decays was taken and the efforts that were made to analyse this data. The results of this preliminary analysis are also shown. This study revealed that TWIST is capable of making a measurement of the bound muon decay spectrum. This report concludes with a discussion of what the future possibilities are for negative muon decay studies with TWIST.