The MESA physics program

Abstract

In the recent past, a comprehensive experimental program has been worked out at the Mainz Energy-Recovery Superconducting Accelerator, MESA, at the Institute of Nuclear Physics in Mainz. MESA is a high-intensity, low-energy electron accelerator presently under construction and will thereby provide great opportunities to perform a new generation of high-precision scattering experiments. The versatile MAGIX experiment will use MESA’s innovative energy recovery technique, with a science focus on the study of hadron structure and few-body systems, dark sector searches, and investigations into reactions pertinent to nuclear astrophysics. An external beam line will supply spin-polarized electrons to the P2 experiment, enabling the performance of sensitive tests of the Standard Model through parity-violating electron scattering. The DarkMESA beam dump experiment, situated behind P2, is dedicated to the search for light dark matter particles.