
JOINT PARTICLE SEMINAR
NOTE SPECIAL TIME
Date: Thursday, 10 March 2005
Time:
2:00 p.m.
Place: 4135 Frederick Reines Hall
Speaker:
Andrei Gritsan, LBNL
Title:
B Meson Decays to Vector Particles: a New Window on Fundamental
Interactions
Abstract:
Fundamental particles and their interactions are the necessary
building blocks in understanding our Universe, its existence and evolution.
B-factory experiments produce abundant samples of B mesons to study
fundamental interactions. CP-violation measurements can be represented on
the "Unitarity Triangle." One angle of the triangle is now known to about
5%. The best measurements for the second angle were expected to come from
the simple decay of a B meson into two pions. Instead, the best measurements
have come from the decay of B mesons into a pair of spin-one resonances,
B->rho rho. Another decay to a pair of vector mesons, B->phi K* is found to
have polarization not consistent with expectations. Could this be a sign of
New Physics? This opens a completely new approach to CP violation studies
and search for new fundamental interactions.
Host: A. Lankford