Physics Department News

The LHCb collaboration has just published in Phys. Rev. Lett. the first observation of a class of rare decays of a baryon containing the b quark. Studies of particles containing the b quark are of great interest as they provide opportunities to investigate asymmetries between matter and antimatter. Current and previous experiments have made detailed investigations into b mesons, but there is much less information available concerning b baryons. Observation of this new class of decay modes shows that it will in future be possible to make detailed studies of matter-antimatter asymmetries also with baryons, which may help to address one of the big mysteries in science today -- why a small amount of matter, that makes up our observable Universe today, survived from the symmetric conditions that existed shortly after the Big Bang.

Heterostructures combining multiple 2D materials are key to exploiting the promise of these novel materials in technological devices. New work involving investigators from the Department of Physics (Hine & Wilson) has investigated the unusual electronic structure effects at the interfaces formed when different transition metal dichalcogenide (TMDC) materials such as MoSe₂ and WSe₂ are combined.

Prof. R.A. Roemer has been appointed as new editor for Physica E (Low-dimensional systems and nanostructures). The journal contains papers and invited review articles on the fundamental and applied aspects of physics in low-dimensional systems)

• University of Warwick researchers identify a white dwarf pulsar – a star type which has eluded astronomers for half a century
• Star lashes its neighbour with intense radiation beam every two minutes
• Research published in Nature Astronomy