The LHCb detector is a forward spectrometer at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN. The experiment is designed for precision measurements of CP violation and rare decays of beauty and charm hadrons. In this paper the performance of the various LHCb sub-detectors and the trigger system are described, using data taken from 2010 to 2012. It is shown that the design criteria of the experiment have been met. The excellent performance of the detector has allowed the LHCb collaboration to publish a wide range of physics results, demonstrating LHCb's unique role, both as a heavy flavour experiment and as a general purpose detector in the forward region.
decay, with a statistical significance exceeding six standard deviations, and the best measurement so far of its branching fraction. Furthermore, we obtained evidence for the B 0 ? m 1 m 2 decay with a statistical significance of three standard deviations. Both measurements are statistically compatible with standard model predictions and allow stringent constraints to be placed on theories beyond the standard model. The LHC experiments will resume taking data in 2015, recording proton-proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 13 teraelectronvolts, which will approximately double the production rates of B 0 s and B 0 mesons and lead to further improvements in the precision of these crucial tests of the standard model.Experimental particle physicists have been testing the predictions of the standard model of particle physics (SM) with increasing precision since the 1970s. Theoretical developments have kept pace by improving the accuracy of the SM predictions as the experimental results gained in precision. In the course of the past few decades, the SM has passed critical tests derived from experiment, but it does not address some profound questions about the nature of the Universe. For example, the existence of dark matter, which has been confirmed by cosmological data 3 , is not accommodated by the SM. It also fails to explain the origin of the asymmetry between matter and antimatter, which after the Big Bang led to the survival of the tiny amount of matter currently present in the Universe Fig. 1c, is forbidden at the elementary level because the Z 0 cannot couple directly to quarks of different flavours, that is, there are no direct 'flavour changing neutral currents'. However, it is possible to respect this rule and still have this decay occur through 'higher order' transitions such as those shown in Fig. 1d and e. These are highly suppressed because each additional interaction vertex reduces their probability of occurring significantly. They are also helicity and CKM suppressed. Consequently, the branching fraction for the B 0 s ?m z m { decay is expected to be very small compared to the dominant b antiquark to c antiquark transitions. The corresponding decay of the B 0 meson, where a d quark replaces the s quark, is even more CKM suppressed because it requires a jump across two quark generations rather than just one.The branching fractions, B, of these two decays, accounting for higher-order electromagnetic and strong interaction effects, and using lattice quantum chromodynamics to compute the B 8,9 , such as in the diagrams shown in Fig. 1f and g, that can considerably modify the SM branching fractions. In particular, theories with additional Higgs bosons 10,11 predict possible enhancements to the branching fractions. A significant deviation of either of the two branching fraction measurements from the SM predictions would give insight on how the SM should be extended. Alternatively, a measurement compatible with the SM could provide strong constraints on BSM theories. . Both CMS and LHCb later ...
Background: The search for violations of Lorentz invariance is nowadays motivated by attempts to unify the Standard Model of particle physics with general relativity. Such theories of "quantum gravity" predict Lorentz-violating signals that could be detected in low-energy precision experiments. In this context, Lorentz invariance has been tested poorly in the weak interaction.Purpose: We explore the possibility that the weak interaction violates Lorentz, and in particular rotational, invariance in neutron and allowed nuclear β decay.Method: A broad class of Lorentz-violating effects is considered in an effective field theory approach, wherein the standard propagator of the W -boson acquires an additional Lorentz-violating tensor.Results: The general decay rate for allowed β decay that incorporates the modified W -boson propagator is derived. The resulting Lorentz-violating signals are discussed for the different types of β-decay transitions: Fermi, Gamow-Teller, and mixed. We study the implications of our formalism for dedicated β-decay experiments. We give a short overview of the few relevant experiments that have been performed in the past or are ongoing. Conclusions:Our work provides a general theoretical framework that should be used for designing and interpreting β-decay experiments that search for Lorentz violation. In particular, it determines the kind of experiments that are necessary to probe different parameters that quantify Lorentz violation, and it establishes their sensitivity.
Measuring cross-sections at the LHC requires the luminosity to be determined accurately at each centre-of-mass energy √ s. In this paper results are reported from the luminosity calibrations carried out at the LHC interaction point 8 with the LHCb detector for √ s = 2.76, 7 and 8 TeV (proton-proton collisions) and for √ s NN = 5 TeV (proton-lead collisions). Both the "van der Meer scan" and "beam-gas imaging" luminosity calibration methods were employed. It is observed that the beam density profile cannot always be described by a function that is factorizable in the two transverse coordinates. The introduction of a two-dimensional description of the beams improves significantly the consistency of the results. For proton-proton interactions at √ s = 8 TeV a relative precision of the luminosity calibration of 1.47% is obtained using van der Meer scans and 1.43% using beam-gas imaging, resulting in a combined precision of 1.12%. Applying the calibration to the full data set determines the luminosity with a precision of 1.16%. This represents the most precise luminosity measurement achieved so far at a bunched-beam hadron collider.
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