The Dark Side of the Muon

by Tien-Tien Yu (U Oregon)

Wednesday 4 Feb 2026, 12:30 → 14:30 America/Los_Angeles

48/2-224 - Madrone (SLAC)

High-energy muon colliders represent a compelling option for a future collider program, offering unique and rich physics opportunities. At sufficiently high energies, the muon can be thought of as having constituents described by muon parton distribution functions (PDFs). In this seminar, I present an analysis strategy for probing Beyond the Standard Model (BSM) physics through modifications to the muon PDFs induced by BSM physics, leading to observable signatures at a future muon collider. As a concrete case study, I apply this framework to an Lmu-Ltau gauge boson and demonstrate that, for masses in the range of approximately 50–100 GeV, this indirect PDF-based approach outperforms traditional searches relying on direct gauge-boson production. These results highlight muon-PDF probes as a powerful and promising avenue for BSM physics searches at a future muon collider.