CERN Accelerating science

LHCb

The LHC pilot beam at LHCb in preparation for Run 3 start

During the second long shutdown of the LHC, the LHCb experiment is undergoing a full metamorphosis to be able to collect an unprecedented data sample starting from next year [1]. This upgrade of LHCb has been designed to be able to operate at five…

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LHCb discovers a double-charm tetraquark

Conventional mesons and baryons consist of a quark-antiquark and three quarks respectively. However, particles with an alternative quark content, known as exotic states, have been actively discussed since the birth of the constituent quark model in…

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LHCb experiment looks forward

The LHCb detector provides unique precision coverage of the forward region at the LHC, enabling world-leading studies of flavour physics and more. The collaboration is currently installing the first major upgrade of the detector. This upgrade will…

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LHCb in the hunt of tetraquarks

In 2003, the Belle collaboration reported the observation of an unexpected new particle, showing up in the mass spectrum of J/ψ π π candidated. Its mass was somewhat close to the value expected for the yet unobserved χc1(2P) charmonium, but its…

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LHC experiments ramp-up activities

Around the world,research centres, laboratories and universities have closed as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic — forcing an increasing number of researchers to work from home. Researchers teleworking coordinated with colleagues who had to…

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LHCb adopts GPUs in Run 3 trigger

The LHCb experiment is currently being upgraded to continue its study of beauty and charm hadrons at a five times higher instantaneous luminosity in LHC Run 3 that is now set to start in 2022. At the increased luminosity, these hadrons are produced…

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Heterogeneous computing efforts for high-energy physics experiments

Substantial improvements to the current experiments at the LHC are underway, and new experiments are being proposed or discussed at future energy-frontier accelerators to answer fundamental questions in particle physics. At future hadron colliders,…

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You have to love the penguins

In 1977 John Ellis made a bet with a student, Melissa Franklin, “If you lose this game of darts,” Franklin said, “you have to use the word ‘penguin’ in your next paper.” John Ellis lost and as a result he coined the term Penguin decays while…

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Upgrading the LHCb trigger system

The LHCb experiment is undergoing a significant upgrade during LS2 in order to allow it to run at a five times higher instantaneous luminosity in LHC Run 3. In order to deal with the corresponding increase in pileup per bunch crossing, most of the…

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News about the lepton universality anomalies in B decays

In the Standard Model all leptons are equal. The W and Z bosons as well as the photon couple equally to electrons (e), muons (μ) and taus (τ), a rule that is known as lepton universality. The only exception is the Higgs boson, that couples according…

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