BYLINE: Jen Roney
Newswise — Argonne scientists contributed to the Muon g-2 experiment hosted at Fermilab, recognized with the 2026 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics for delivering the world’s most precise measurement to date of the muon’s magnetic anomaly.
The Muon g-2 experiment, hosted at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), Brookhaven National Laboratory and CERN — the European Organization for Nuclear Research — received the prestigious Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics for its precision measurement of a tiny particle called the muon.
The DOE’s Argonne National Laboratory researchers are among the winners of this year’s Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics, one of the world’s most notable and prestigious scientific awards celebrating new scientific discoveries. Each prize is $3 million and is presented in the fields of life sciences, fundamental physics and mathematics.
The 2026 award in fundamental physics recognized three generations of the Muon g-2 experiment, which provided the world’s most precise measurement to date of the muon, one of the fundamental subatomic particles. The experiment began at CERN in the 1970s, shifted to Brookhaven in the 1990s and concluded at Fermilab, with final results published in 2025.
“This recognition reflects decades of work across the multiple collaborations, and Argonne’s contributions were part of the final phase of the Fermilab collaboration that helped achieve this level of precision,” said Peter Winter, interim deputy director for the High Energy Physics division at Argonne and co-spokesperson for the Muon g-2 experiment at Fermilab.
The Breakthrough Prize, sometimes referred to as the Oscars of science, recognizes the world’s top scientists. This year’s $3 million fundamental physics prize has been awarded to the hundreds of living collaborators, including Argonne researchers, who contributed to publications reporting key results from CERN, Brookhaven and Fermilab. Achieving their extraordinary level of precision required coordinated advances in instrumentation, calibration and analysis across the collaboration.
“This recognition reflects decades of work across the multiple collaborations, and Argonne’s contributions were part of the final phase of the Fermilab collaboration that helped achieve this level of precision.” — Peter Winter, Argonne physicist
The prize was presented at a ceremony at the Barker Hangar in Santa Monica, California, on April 18. Four members accepted the prize on behalf of the Muon g-2 collaborations: Chris Polly of Fermilab, Bradley Lee Roberts of Boston University, William M. Morse of Brookhaven and David Hertzog of the University of Washington.
The three generations of Muon g-2 experiments were designed to measure something called the magnetic anomaly, whose value is related to g-2 — the experiment’s namesake measurement (pronounced “gee minus two”) — with ever-increasing precision. This precision gives scientists a powerful way to probe the quantum vacuum, where particles briefly appear and vanish, and where even tiny deviations could point to entirely new laws of nature outside of the current Standard Model of particle physics.
The latest and most precise measurement of the muon magnetic anomaly was announced by Fermilab in 2025, providing one of the most sensitive tests yet of the Standard Model.
“It was a privilege to help bring together the final analysis, building on many years of work across the collaboration,” said Simon Corrodi, an Argonne physicist who served as analysis co-coordinator for the final chapter. Both Winter and Corrodi spoke at Fermilab’s announcement of the latest measurements.
Fermilab led the experiment’s most recent stage using a 50-foot-diameter magnetic storage ring originally built for the earlier experiment at Brookhaven. In 2013, the massive ring was transported on a land-and-sea journey from Upton, New York, to Fermilab in Batavia, Illinois.
In 2021, the first result from Fermilab’s Muon g-2 experiment confirmed Brookhaven’s two-decade-old measurement and strengthened evidence of a possible discrepancy between experiment and established theoretical predictions by the Standard Model. The second Fermilab test further improved the measurement’s precision. The third and final result in 2025 — the world’s most precise measurement of the muon magnetic anomaly — was in perfect agreement with previous results.
Argonne researchers contributed to several critical components of the final chapter of the experiment, including the design and operation of the trolley system used to map the storage ring’s magnetic field, the development and calibration of high-precision detectors, and data analysis that helped the collaboration achieve its unprecedented precision. Argonne was also actively involved in the operation of the experiment and management of the collaboration.
In addition to Winter and Corrodi, Argonne physicist Yuri Oksuzian also recently contributed to the Muon g-2 collaboration. Ran Hong, now a controls engineer at Argonne, and Patrick De Lurgio and Michael Oberling — both engineers at Argonne — also contributed to the experiment during an earlier period at the laboratory. Former Argonne-affiliated contributors include Sam Grant, Yongyi Wu, Suvarna Ramachandran and Joseph Grange, who were postdoctoral researchers while at Argonne.
This article was adapted from a joint press release published by Fermilab, Brookhaven and CERN.
Jen Roney is a freelance writer and communications specialist highlighting the work of scientists and engineers across various directorates at Argonne. She has been writing and producing communications content for organizations across industries, including energy, engineering, and technology, since 2009.
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