First evidence for matter-antimatter asymmetries in baryon decays by LHCb

The LHCb collaboration has published today in Nature Physics the first evidence for the violation of the CP symmetry in baryon decays with statistical significance of 3.3 standard deviations (σ). CP violation has been observed in K and B meson decays, but not yet in any baryon decay.

An unconventional 4-quark particle

On 9 April 2014, researchers at the LHCb experiment published a paper validating the existence of an exotic particle, which appears to be a tetraquark. The LHCb spokesperson Pierluigi Campana said: “We are very happy to have confirmed this particle, which is in fact a very strange object.”

Precisely 50 years ago, George Zweig and Murray Gell-Mann independently introduced the Quark Model, which is a fundamental cornerstone in particle physics. The model is a perfect tool to understand how matter interacts…

SIF Fermi Prize for decisive contribution to LHC discoveries

The 2013 Enrico Fermi Prize of the Italian Physical Society [SIF] has been awarded to Pierluigi Campana (INFN Laboratori Nazionali di Frascati), Simone Giani (CERN), Fabiola Gianotti (CERN), Paolo Giubellino (INFN Torino) and Guido Tonelli (Università di Pisa and INFN Pisa), “for the outstanding results that the five large international collaboration experiments at the CERN Large Hadron Collider [LHC] – LHCb, TOTEM, ATLAS, ALICE, CMS – have achieved during the first period of LHC data taking under the successful guidance of the…

Lead ions and protons colliding for first time in LHC

The LHC saw its first collisions of lead ions with protons on 13 September. The largest experiments – ALICE, ATLAS, CMS and LHCb – all recorded lead ion-proton collisions in this test, which precedes the main run planned for January-February next year.

For more information, please visit the CERN website.

LHC delivers collisions at record energy

After a three-month winter maintenance stop, the Large Hadron Collider [LHC] at CERN has resumed operation, with beams, on 14 March. Two days later, low intensity beams were accelerated to 4 TeV for the first time, achieving a new world record.

During the preceding month, all machine components – including almost 2,000 superconducting magnet circuits – were tested for operation at currents which allow these accelerating beams of up to 4 TeV…