neutral particle oscillation In particle physics, neutral particle oscillation is the transmutation of a particle with zero electric charge into another neutral particle due to a change of a non-zero internal quantum number, via an interaction that does not conserve that quantu ...
, a fundamental prediction of the Standard Model
The Standard Model of particle physics is the theory describing three of the four known fundamental forces ( electromagnetic, weak and strong interactions - excluding gravity) in the universe and classifying all known elementary particles. I ...
of particle physics
Particle physics or high energy physics is the study of fundamental particles and forces that constitute matter and radiation. The fundamental particles in the universe are classified in the Standard Model as fermions (matter particles) and ...
. It is the phenomenon of B meson
In particle physics, B mesons are mesons composed of a bottom antiquark and either an up (), down (), strange () or charm quark (). The combination of a bottom antiquark and a top quark is not thought to be possible because of the top quark's s ...
s changing (or ''oscillating'') between their matter
In classical physics and general chemistry, matter is any substance that has mass and takes up space by having volume. All everyday objects that can be touched are ultimately composed of atoms, which are made up of interacting subatomic par ...
and antimatter
In modern physics, antimatter is defined as matter composed of the antiparticles (or "partners") of the corresponding particles in "ordinary" matter. Antimatter occurs in natural processes like cosmic ray collisions and some types of radio ...
forms before their decay. The meson can exist as either a bound state of a strange antiquark and a bottom quark
The bottom quark or b quark, also known as the beauty quark, is a third-generation heavy quark with a charge of − ''e''.
All quarks are described in a similar way by electroweak and quantum chromodynamics, but the bottom quark has exce ...
, or a strange quark and bottom antiquark. The oscillations in the neutral B sector are analogous to the phenomena that produce long and short-lived neutral kaon
KAON (Karlsruhe ontology) is an ontology infrastructure developed by the University of Karlsruhe and the Research Center for Information Technologies in Karlsruhe.
Its first incarnation was developed in 2002 and supported an enhanced version o ...
s.
– mixing was observed by the CDF experiment at Fermilab
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), located just outside Batavia, Illinois, near Chicago, is a United States Department of Energy United States Department of Energy National Labs, national laboratory specializing in high-energy parti ...
in 2006 and by LHCb
The LHCb (Large Hadron Collider beauty) experiment is one of eight particle physics detector experiments collecting data at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. LHCb is a specialized b-physics experiment, designed primarily to measure the parame ...
at CERN in 2011 and 2021.
Excess of matter over antimatter
The Standard Model predicts that regular matter mesons are slightly favored in these oscillations over their antimatter counterpart, making strange B mesons of specialinterest
In finance and economics, interest is payment from a borrower or deposit-taking financial institution to a lender or depositor of an amount above repayment of the principal sum (that is, the amount borrowed), at a particular rate. It is disti ...
to particle physicists. The observation of the – mixing phenomena led physicists to propose the construction of B-factories in the early 1990s. They realized that a precise – oscillation measure could pin down the unitarity triangle
In quantum physics, unitarity is the condition that the time evolution of a quantum state according to the Schrödinger equation is mathematically represented by a unitary operator. This is typically taken as an axiom or basic postulate of quantu ...
and perhaps explain the excess of matter over antimatter in the universe. To this end construction began on two "B factories" in the late nineties, one at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center
SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, originally named the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center,
is a United States Department of Energy National Laboratories, United States Department of Energy National Laboratory operated by Stanford Univers ...
(SLAC) in California
California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the ...
and one at KEK
, known as KEK, is a Japanese organization whose purpose is to operate the largest particle physics laboratory in Japan, situated in Tsukuba, Ibaraki prefecture. It was established in 1997. The term "KEK" is also used to refer to the laboratory ...
in Japan.
These B factories, BaBar
Babar ( ur, ), also variously spelled as Baber, Babur, and Babor is a male given name of Pashto, and Persian origin, and a popular male given name in Pakistan. It is generally taken in reference to the Persian ''babr'' ( Persian: ببر), meani ...
and Belle, were set at the (4S) resonance
Resonance describes the phenomenon of increased amplitude that occurs when the frequency of an applied periodic force (or a Fourier component of it) is equal or close to a natural frequency of the system on which it acts. When an oscillat ...
which is just above the threshold for decay into two B mesons.
On 14 May 2010, physicists at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), located just outside Batavia, Illinois, near Chicago, is a United States Department of Energy national laboratory specializing in high-energy particle physics. Since 2007, Fermilab has been operat ...
reported that the oscillations decayed into matter 1% more often than into antimatter, which may help explain the abundance of matter over antimatter in the observed Universe. However, more recent results at LHCb
The LHCb (Large Hadron Collider beauty) experiment is one of eight particle physics detector experiments collecting data at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. LHCb is a specialized b-physics experiment, designed primarily to measure the parame ...
in 2011, 2012, and 2021 with larger data samples have demonstrated no significant deviation from the Standard Model prediction of very nearly zero asymmetry.
See also
*Baryogenesis
In physical cosmology, baryogenesis (also known as baryosynthesis) is the physical process that is hypothesized to have taken place during the Big Bang, early universe to produce baryonic asymmetry, i.e. the imbalance of matter (baryons) and anti ...
* CP Violation
In particle physics, CP violation is a violation of CP-symmetry (or charge conjugation parity symmetry): the combination of C-symmetry ( charge symmetry) and P-symmetry (parity symmetry). CP-symmetry states that the laws of physics should be t ...
* Kaon
KAON (Karlsruhe ontology) is an ontology infrastructure developed by the University of Karlsruhe and the Research Center for Information Technologies in Karlsruhe.
Its first incarnation was developed in 2002 and supported an enhanced version o ...
* Neutral particle oscillation In particle physics, neutral particle oscillation is the transmutation of a particle with zero electric charge into another neutral particle due to a change of a non-zero internal quantum number, via an interaction that does not conserve that quantu ...
* Strange B meson
The meson is a meson composed of a bottom antiquark and a strange quark. Its antiparticle is the meson, composed of a bottom quark and a strange antiquark.
B–B oscillations
Strange B mesons are noted for their ability to oscillate between ...
References
Further reading
* — paper describing the discovery of B-meson mixing by the ARGUS collaboration * * — announcement of the 5 sigma discoveryExternal links
BaBar Public Homepage
Belle Public Homepage
B physics {{particle-stub