Breakthrough Prize awarded to Muon g-2 Сollaboration

The winners of the Breakthrough Prize 2026, often referred to as the "Oscars of Science" were announced in April. The main programme awarded six top prizes - each worth $3 million - in life sciences, fundamental physics and mathematics.

In the field of fundamental physics, the Prize was awarded to the Muon g-2 Collaboration for measuring the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon. Among the winners are the employees of DLNP.

The Prize in 2026 was awarded for the entire cycle of investigations on the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon, carried out for more than 60 years in three leading research centres: at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) and two national laboratories of the US Department of Energy - Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) and Enrico Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab). The $3 million prize will be shared among living co-authors of publications that presented results from experiments at CERN, BNL and Fermilab. In total, more than 380 physicists became winners of the award.

A group of scientists from DLNP, a part of the Muon g-2 Collaboration at Fermilab (V. A. Baranov, V. P. Volnykh, V. N. Duginov, V. A. Krylov, N. A. Kuchinsky, N. V. Khomutov), participated in the development of a prototype track detector, as well as of a data accumulation and visualization system.

The anomalous muon magnetic moment aµ = (g-2)/2 (where g is the muon gyromagnetic ratio) is the difference between the observed muon magnetic moment value and the Dirac quantum mechanical prediction (2g = 2). The non-zero value of aµ is due to the contribution of various virtual particles of physical vacuum. Therefore, the exact measurement of the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon is very relevant for the search for new physics outside the Standard Model.

DLNP Scientific Communications Group