Researchers measure rare particle decay with high precision

Heavy particles, including undiscovered particles, can be inferred from studies of rare processes. Some of the mysteries of the universe, such as the existence of dark matter, the mass of neutrinos and the universe's matter-antimatter asymmetry, could be explained by such particles.

The decay of neutral B mesons to muon and anti muon pairs is a rare process. The B 0 meson has a beauty antiquark and a down quark, while the B S meson has a strange quark. Only one in 250 million B s mesons will decay into a muon-antimuon pair if there are no new particles.

Since the 1980s, scientists have been looking for confirmation of these decays. The first observation of the B s to muons decay reported in a combined analysis of data taken by the LHCb andCMS collaborations was reported in the year 2014). The B 0 decay isn't accessible to anyone.

A new study of the decay rate and lifetime of the B 0 decay has been released by theCMS experiment. The new study, presented at the International Conference on High Energy Physics (ICHEP), benefits from not only a large amount of data analyzed, but also advanced machine learning techniques that single out rare decay events from the overwhelming background of events produced by millions of particle collisions per second.

The results showed that the B's meson was decaying to a muon-anti muon pair. The measurement of the decay rate is more precise than in the past.

The observed B s decay rate and lifetime measurement are very close to the values predicted by the Standard Model.

Physicists can state with a high degree of confidence that the B 0 decay is less than one part in 5 billion.

A number of anomalies have been observed in other rare B meson decays with discrepancies between the predictions and the data. The new CMS result is close to theoretical predictions and could help scientists understand the nature of the anomalies.

Scientists are interested in rare B meson decays. With the B's meson to muons decay firmly established and measured with high precision, scientists are now setting their sights on the B 0 decay. They hope to catch the first glimpse of this extremely rare process and learn more about the anomalies.