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Observation of rare decays of baryons containing the b quark

The LHCb collaboration has just published in Phys. Rev. Lett. the first observation of a class of rare decays of a baryon containing the b quark. Studies of particles containing the b quark are of great interest as they provide opportunities to investigate asymmetries between matter and antimatter. Current and previous experiments have made detailed investigations into b mesons, but there is much less information available concerning b baryons. Observation of this new class of decay modes shows that it will in future be possible to make detailed studies of matter-antimatter asymmetries also with baryons, which may help to address one of the big mysteries in science today -- why a small amount of matter, that makes up our observable Universe today, survived from the symmetric conditions that existed shortly after the Big Bang.

The results are published as Phys. Rev. Lett. 118 (2017) 071801

Fri 17 Feb 2017, 09:27 | Tags: Research