Rare kaon decay hints at new physics
 

:thumbsup

An experiment at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in the US may have found further evidence of new physics beyond the Standard Model of particle physics. The E949 team has detected twice as many rare K-meson decays as predicted by the model. The results, which were presented at Brookhaven today, have been submitted to Physical Review Letters.

K mesons or kaons are unstable and can decay in a number of ways. In one important but very rare decay, a positive kaon - a bound state of an up quark and a strange antiquark -- decays into a positive pion plus a neutrino and an antineutrino. The Standard Model predicts that this particular decay should occur only once in every 13 billion decays. However, the decay rate might be influenced by particles and processes that are not included in the model. Therefore, any discrepancies between the predictions of the model and experiment could be evidence for these new particles and processes.

The E949 team uses the AGS accelerator at Brookhaven to produce an intense beam of kaons and a detector that is capable of examining 1.6 million decays every second. In particular, the detector can filter the pion-neutrino-antineutrino event from all the other possible decays that the kaon can undergo.

The new result suggests that the rare event could occur once in every 7 billion decays - almost twice the rate predicted by the Standard Model. It follows two earlier sightings of the decay at Brookhaven in 2002 and 1997.

"It is very important to establish whether these first few events represent a statistical fluke or an important breakthrough," said Douglas Bryman of the University of British Columbia and a spokesperson for the experiment. "Additional running of the experiment would resolve the issue and firmly establish whether we are seeing an extremely significant departure from standard theory," he added.

"If our findings continue at the current pace, 20 or more events would be observed," according to a press release issue by Brookhaven. "Such a result could profoundly alter our current picture of particle physics, forcing an expanded view of the fundamental constituents of the universe and their interactions." The E949 collaboration includes physicists from Canada, Russia, Japan and the US.

This is a good sign. I had just about given up hope that any americans were thinking
outside of the pc box anymore.

:Graucho

These foolish men would not have to worry about such insignifigant things if they would accept jesus into their hearts. You can delve as deep into science as you want, but us smart people know that god is always all the way on the other end :2 cents:

what a good read

Hah I remember when you had your Science Post phase.

My apologies Juicy...All this time I figured you were more a philly cheesesteak kinda guy rather than a particle physics enthusiast. :1orglaugh