Results presented by the LHCb collaboration this evening at the annual Rencontres de Moriond conference, held this year in La Thuile, Italy, have put one of the most stringent limits to date on the current theory of particle physics, the Standard Model. LHCb tests the Standard Model by measuring extremely rare processes, in this case a decay pattern predicted to happen just three times out of every billion decays of a particle known as the Bs (B-sub-s) meson. Anything other than that would be evidence for new physics. Measuring the rate of this Bs decay has been a major goal of particle physics experiments in the past decade, with the limit on its decay rate being gradually improved by the CDF and D0 experiments at Fermilab, LHCb, and most recently CMS at CERN.
Find out more:
- Full press release
- About LHCb
- LHCb website
- CERN Bulletin: New physics further constrained by LHCb results
- Quantum diaries: LHCb finds a few very special events out of 10 billion