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