#Matter and antimatter full#

Franz Muheim, University of Edinburgh, who led the photodetector test programme, 'The performance of the detector so far has already exceeded our expectations. 'This is an important measurement and step forward in our understanding of the puzzle of the missing anti-matter in our Universe.', says Prof.

The measurement relies on the ability of the experiment to accurately distinguish between pions and kaons using photodetectors that were tested and qualified at the Universities of Edinburgh and Glasgow. The data contains approximately one thousand B s → π K decays in which a difference between the rate of decays to the final state K -π + and its CP mirror image K +π - is observed with a significance exceeding 5 sigma, the standard criterion for discovery. The confirmation of the previous measurement and discovery of CP violation in the B s is based on analysis of 70 trillion proton-proton collisions.

#Matter and antimatter full#

Now the full sample from 2011 has been scrutinised and the analysis refined. LHCb first found a hint for CP violation in the decay of B s mesons in March 2012 with the analysis of a third of the data sample collected in 2011. A small difference in the rates at which these two decay modes happen, indicates CP violation, a difference in the behaviour of matter and antimatter. In this measurement of CP violation effects, scientists look at two variants of a decay of the B s meson, namely the decay to the final state K -π + (a negatively charged kaon and a positively charged pion) and its “mirror image” final state K +π - where all particles are replaced by their antiparticles (a positively charged kaon and a negatively charged pion). Now this behaviour has also been observed in B s mesons, states made from beauty and strange quarks and antiquarks. The later discovery of CP violation in the B 0 system confirmed the theoretical description of the phenomenon and led to the 2008 Nobel prize. CP Violation is already well known in two of these: the first observation of CP violation was made in 1964 in the neutral kaon (K 0) system, a discovery that led to the 1980 Nobel prize. Four neutral meson systems are possible in nature, named the K 0, D 0, B 0 and B s. Differences between matter and anti-matter are probed by studying the properties of particles called mesons that contain two bound quarks.

At the LHC we are colliding protons onto protons head on, thereby recreating the conditions as they existed 10 -12 seconds after the Big Bang.

The Large Hadron Collider beauty (LHCb) experiment is designed to look for the small differences between matter and antimatter in the particles produced in collisions at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, Geneva. A new discovery by the LHCb experiment means scientists have taken a further in understanding the difference between matter and anti-matter. The absence of anti-matter in the Universe requires that there are differences in the behaviour of matter and anti-matter (CP violation). The universe we live in consists of matter, but scientists assume that in the beginning, the big bang created equal amounts of matter and anti-matter. This effect is important to our understanding of the absence of antimatter in the Universe. The LHCb experiment has observed a matter-antimatter difference in the neutral B s meson system.