The University of Warwick joined the LHCb collaboration in November 2008. We receive, or have received, funding from a number of external sources including:

A list of all the publications we have worked on is available under Physics Analysis.

Latest news

• 8 October 2018: Abhijit Mathad successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis
• 15 September 2018: Daniel O'Hanlon awarded the Springer Ph.D. thesis prize; thesis published in the Springer thesis series (ISBN: 978-3-030-02205-1).
• 28 August 2018: "Physics case for an LHCb Upgrade II - Opportunities in flavour physics, and beyond, in the HL-LHC era" available as arXiv:1808.08865
• 1 August 2018: "Angular moments of the decay Λ_b⁰ → Λμ⁺μ⁻" available as arXiv:1808.00264. Update 26 September 2018: published as JHEP 09 (2018) 146
• 30 July 2018: IoP eBook on "Tetraquarks and Pentaquarks" published and freely available. Update 30 August 2018: Discussed in a Physics World podcast
• 25 July 2018: Opening for a Research Fellow: more information and online application in the link. Closing date 22 Aug 2018
• 19 April 2018: "Evidence for the decay B⁰_s→K^∗0barμ⁺μ⁻" available as arXiv:1804.07167. Update 30 July 2018: published as JHEP 07 (2018) 020
• 21 March 2018: "Mapping the material in the LHCb vertex locator using secondary hadronic interactions" available as arXiv:1803.07466. Update 14 June 2018: published as JINST 13 (2018) P06008
• 19-20 March 2018: TORCH collaboration meeting hosted at University of Warwick.
• 5 March 2018: "Selection and processing of calibration samples to measure the particle identification performance of the LHCb experiment in Run 2" available as arXiv:1803.00824
• 25 December 2017: "Unbinned model-independent measurements with coherent admixtures of multibody neutral D meson decays" available as arXiv:1712.08326. Update 10 February 2018: published as EPJ C78 (2018) 121
• 22 December 2017: "Optimising sensitivity to γ with B⁰→DK⁺π⁻, D→K⁰_Sπ⁺π⁻ double Dalitz plot analysis" available as arXiv:1712.07853. Update 5 March 2018: published as PR D97 (2018) 056002
• 28 November 2017: "Laura++ : a Dalitz plot fitter" available as arXiv:1711.09854. Update 14 June 2018: published as CPC 231 (2018) 198
• 3 October 2017: "Angular distribution of polarised Λ_b baryons decaying to Λl⁺l^-" available as arXiv:1710.00746. Update 22 November 2017: published as JHEP 11 (2017) 138

The Group

People Tim Gershon (academic) Michal Kreps (academic) John Back (STFC Senior Research Fellow) Tom Blake (Royal Socity University Research Fellow) Tom Latham (STFC Senior Research Fellow) Mika Vesterinen (STFC Ernest Rutherford Fellow) Abhijit Mathad (Ph.D. student) Andrew Crocombe (Ph.D. student) Cayo Costa Sobral (Ph.D. student) Edward Millard (Ph.D. student) Arnau Brossa Gonzalo (Ph.D. student) Flavia Cicala (Ph.D. student) Ross Hunter (Ph.D. student) Andy Morris (Ph.D. student)

Activities VELO Simulation Event display Trigger and data stripping Analysis database Upgrade Physics analysis TORCH

VELO

We are members of the VErtex LOcator subdetector group and authors of the VELO performance paper (arXiv:1405.7808).

Simulation

We are responsible for the EvtGen Monte Carlo generator within the experiment.

Trigger and data stripping

We are involved with the HLT2 (high-level trigger) and data stripping activity.

Upgrade

We are interested in the physics potential of an LHCb upgrade. In particular, we are examining the requirements that operating at much higher rates will impose on the vertex detector. We are involved in the upgrade of the VELO subdetector.

TORCH

We are members of the TORCH collaboration, carrying out R&D for a novel time-of-flight detector that could provide particle identification information, to discriminate between charged pions, kaons and protons at low momentum.

Physics Analysis (more information here)

We have leading roles in the collaboration in measurements related to the angle γ (gamma) of the so-called Unitarity Triangle and of rare b hadron decays mediated by the b→sμ⁺μ⁻ transition. We also have interests in several other areas, particularly in analyses involving Dalitz plot analysis. We hosted an LHCb UK workshop on Dalitz plot analysis in October 2009.

Openings

Information on job openings and Ph.D. positions in the Warwick EPP group can be found here. Please feel free to contact us (T dot J dot Gershon at warwick dot ac dot uk) for more information or to discuss possibilities.

Theses and Alumni

• Paul Harrison (moved to ATLAS)
• Mark Whitehead CERN-THESIS-2012-130 "Observation of the decay B0→D0K+K− with the LHCb detector at CERN", moved to a CERN fellowship
• Matt Williams CERN-THESIS-2013-351 "Search for a wrong-flavour contribution to Bs→Dsπ decays and study of CP violation in Bs→DsK decays", moved to University of Birmingham
• David Dossett CERN-THESIS-2013-299 "Measurement of the B0d,s→K∗±h∓ decay branching fractions at the LHCb experiment", moved to University of Melbourne
• Matt Reid CERN-THESIS-2014-125 "Branching fraction measurements of B0(s)→J/ψK0Sh+h(′)− decays", took a job in the financial sector
• Tomas Pilar CERN-THESIS-2014-302 "Measurement of the neutral D meson mixing parameters in D0→KSπ+π− decays", took a job in software
• Rafael Silva Coutinho CERN-THESIS-2015-117 "Studies of charmless three-body b-hadron decays at LHCb", moved to University of Zurich, Switzerland
• Daniel Craik CERN-THESIS-2015-285 "A measurement of the CKM angle γ from studies of B→DKπ Dalitz plots", moved to University of Edinburgh
• Christoph Langenbruch (Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellow at Warwick) moved to take up Emmy Noether fellowship at RWTH Aachen University, Germany
• Charlotte Wallace CERN-THESIS-2016-064 "Studies of excited D mesons in B meson decays", moved to University of Bristol and then to a civil service job
• Ronnie Rera CERN-THESIS-2017-018 "Search for the decay B+→D∗−K+π+", went into officer training with the US Air Force
• Chris Everett CERN-THESIS-2016-322 "An angular analysis of Λ_b→Λμ⁺μ⁻ decays at the LHCb experiment", moved to nuclear physics group at University of Liverpool
• Jean Wicht (Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellow) returned to Switzerland and left the field of particle physics
• Daniel O'Hanlon CERN-THESIS-2017-184 "Studies of CP-violation in charmless three-body b-hadron decays", moved to Universita Bologna, Italy with an INFN fellowship
• Wenbin Qian (Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellow) moved to take up an academic position at UCAS, China
• Anton Poluektov (Postdoctoral research fellow) moved on to take up an academic position at CPPM, Marseille

Completed grants

• Advanced Techniques to Search for Physics Beyond the Standard Model with the LHCb Detector at CERN, funded through an ERC Starting Investigator grant (ERC-2009-StG; link to Warwick page)
• Exploring New Phenomena through Flavour Changing Neutral Currents with LHCb, funded through a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Intra-European Fellowship under FP7 (FP7-PEOPLE-2013-IEF; link to Warwick page)
• Understanding Matter-Antimatter Asymmetries in B Meson Decays to Three Particles, funded through a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship under Horizon 2020 (H2020-MSCA-IF-2014)