Physics Department News
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