The Case for B Mesons

Although B mesons are subatomic particles predicted by the Standard Model (SM), they sometimes behave in ways physicists cannot explain using basic SM approximations. For that reason, particle physicists like Mitesh Patel have dedicated their careers to studying the four types of B meson particles, their decay habits and flavor oscillations.

Patel is a faculty member in the Department of Physics at Imperial College London and leads the "Rare Decays" working group at LHCb, one of the LHC's seven particle physics detector experiments. During his talk at ICTP for SUSY 2013, he discussed "LHCb results relevant to SUSY and BSM physics."

Patel and his team at LHCb use supersymmetric extensions of the SM as a tool to study and understand rare decays of B mesons. "Rare decays are a window on virtual new particles beyond the energy scale accessible in direct searches," Patel said.

Patel and his team have discovered new kinds of rare B meson decays as well as conducted the world's best measurements of previously recognized rare B meson decays. Some of these observations, Patel explained, have put constraints on certain SM parameters that could lead to the discovery of new heavy particles while other observations comprise some of the largest deviations from SM predictions physicists have observed from CERN data.

With the prospect of LHCb's upgrade, Patel is looking to measure how often the rare B meson decays of certain B particles occur to higher precision. Comparing more precise rates will, Patel hopes, place tighter constraints on SM parameters and expand the opportunity for the potential discovery of new particles that could ultimately confirm the supersymmetric model and open the door to physics Beyond the Standard Model.

This story is part of the Focus Feature on SUSY 2013. Go to the Focus Feature webpage for the complete coverage.