CP Violation In Charm Decays: 3.5 Sigma From LHCb!

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Harbles
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CP Violation In Charm Decays: 3.5 Sigma From LHCb!

Post by Harbles » Tue Nov 15, 2011 1:13 pm

Big news from a CERN experiment other than the big three of Atlas CMS and Alice.

LHCB shown 3 sigma evidence of CP violation in charm decays that is significantly non zero. Not predicted by standard model so it's new but needs more data to give confirmation of the findings.
Three articles on this should explain.

http://www.science20.com/quantum_diarie ... lhcb-84633

http://resonaances.blogspot.com/2011/11 ... maybe.html

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmi ... violation/

Dr Carroll sums up;

"So what could be going on? As Jester says, this is a surprising result — there aren’t a lot of models on the market that predict this level of CP violation in D0 decays but not in any of the other experiments we’ve already done. But the general idea, if you wanted to come up with such a model, would be to add new heavy particles that gently interfere with the process by which the charm quark in the above diagram decays into lighter quarks.
If I were to guess, I’d put my money on this result going away. But it stands a fighting chance! If it does hold up, to be honest it would be a bit frustrating — we would know that something new was going on, but not have too much of an idea what exactly it would be. But at least we’d know something about where to look, which is a huge advantage. "

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