LHCb

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

16 June 2022: "Averages of b-hadron, c-hadron, and τ-lepton properties as of 2021" (HFLAV report) available as arXiv:2206.07501
1 June 2022: Springer Thesis Prize recognising outstanding PhD research awarded to Arnau Brossa Gonzalo for his thesis "First observation of $B^{0} \to {\bar{D}}^{*} (2007)^{0} K^{+} π^{-}$ and $B_{s}^{0} \to {\bar{D}}^{*} (2007)^{0} K^{-} π^{+}$ decays in LHCb", available as CERN-THESIS-2022-007
31 May 2022: "The role of multi-parton interactions in doubly-heavy hadron production" available as arXiv:2205.15681. #MWAPP
13 May 2022: "Dispersive bounds for local form factors in Λb→Λ transitions" available as arXiv:2205.06041
25 April 2022: Advert for two Postdoctoral Research Associate positions in the Warwick LHCb group. Deadline May 22nd. See also INSPIREHEP jobs.
22 April 2022: Advert for Lecturer/Senior Lecturer at Monash University as part of our Monash-Warwick Alliance in Particle Physics #MWAPP. Deadline for applications: 2 June 2022.
9 February 2022: "Prospects for studies of D*0→μ+μ− and B*0(s)→μ+μ− decays" available as arXiv:2202.03916. #MWAPP Update 19 May 2022: published as Eur. Phys. J. C82 (2022) 459
21 January 2022: "Considerations for the VELO detector at the LHCb Upgrade II" available as LHCb-PUB-2022-001
10 January 2022: Announcement of ERC Starting Grant award to Matt Kenzie for the KstarKstar project.
22 December 2021: "Observation of the B⁰ → D*bar⁰K⁺π⁻ and B_s⁰ → D*bar⁰K⁻π⁺ decays" available as arXiv:2112.11428. Update 20 April 2022: published as PR D105 (2022) 072005
10 December 2021: "Custom Orthogonal Weight functions (COWs) for Event Classification" available as arXiv:2112.04574
19 November 2021: "Measurement of the photon polarization in Λ_b→Λγ decays" available as arXiv:2111.10194. Update 23 March 2022: published as PR D105 (2022) L051104
9 November 2021: "Testing the Standard Model with CP-asymmetries in flavour-specific non-leptonic decays" available as arXiv:2111.04478; update 17 June 2022 published as PR D105 (2022) 115023
7 October 2021: "Simultaneous determination of CKM angle γ and charm mixing parameters" available as arXiv:2110.02350, update 28 December 2021 published as JHEP 12 (2021) 141
13 September 2021: HQL2021 conference hosted at University of Warwick
7 September 2021: Monash Warwick Alliance video, including #MWAPP, available on YouTube
17 August 2021: "Search for the radiative Ξ_b⁻ → Ξ⁻γ decay" available as arXiv:2108.07678, update 14 January 2022 published as JHEP 01 (2022) 069.
29 June 2021: LHCb's first measurement of W boson mass reported in CERN seminar. See also the Warwick EPP seminar. Update 3 September: "Measurement of the W boson mass" available as arXiv:2109.01113. Update 10 January 2022: published as JHEP 01 (2022) 036
8 June 2021: "Observation of the mass difference between neutral charm-meson eigenstates" available as arXiv:2106.03744. See associated STFC and University of Warwick press releases. Update 14 September 2021: published as PRL 127 (2021) 111801
3 May 2021: "Search for CP violation in Ξ_b⁻ → pK⁻K⁻ decays" available as arXiv:2104.15074. Update 20 September: published as PR D104 (2021) 052010
23 March 2021: LHCb releases 3.1σ evidence for lepton universality violation in B → Kl⁺l⁻ decays, arXiv:2103.11769; see this great video for a general explanation of this result or this Warwick Knowledge Centre article. Update 15 March 2022: published as Nature Physics 18 (2022) 277
3 March 2021: More than 50 hadrons discovered at the LHC, as discussed in this Research Nugget
15 January 2021: "A simple method to determine curvature biases in track reconstruction in hadron collider experiments" available as arXiv:2101.05675; update 22 March 2021: published as EPJ C81 (2021) 251

The Group

People

Tim Gershon (Professor)
Tom Blake (Royal Society University Research Fellow)
Matt Kenzie (STFC Ernest Rutherford Fellow)
Michal Kreps (Associate Professor)
Mika Vesterinen (STFC Ernest Rutherford Fellow)
John Back (Senior Research Fellow)
Tom Latham (Senior Research Fellow)
Fernando Abudinén (Research Fellow)
Luis Miguel Garcia Martin (Research Fellow)
Miguel Ramos Pernas (Research Fellow)
Menglin Xu (Research Fellow)
Flavia Cicala (Ph.D. student)
Ross Hunter (Ph.D. student)
Andy Morris (Ph.D. student)
Tom Jones (Ph.D. student)
Bhagyashree Pagare (Ph.D. student)
Ahmed Abdelmotteleb (Ph.D. student)
Anja Beck (Ph.D. student)
Alex Ward (Ph.D. student)
Aidan Wiederhold (Ph.D. student)
Matthew Monk (Ph.D. student)
Lorenzo Paolucci (Ph.D. student)
Emir Muhammad (Ph.D. student)

Activities

VELO including upgrades
Simulation including EvtGen
Event display
Trigger, data stripping and real time analysis
Physics analysis
TORCH

VELO

We are members of the VErtex LOcator subdetector group and authors of the VELO performance paper (arXiv:1405.7808). We are involved in the upgrade of the VELO subdetector, and planning for future upgrades to cope with ever higher data rates.

Simulation

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

Trigger, data stripping and real time analysis

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

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 took a job in software
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 to take up an academic position at CPPM, Marseille
David Loh (Ph.D. student), left academic research
Abhijit Mathad CERN-THESIS-2018-237 "Search for CP violation in charmless three-body decays of strange-beauty baryons", moved to University of Zurich, Switzerland
Andrew Crocombe CERN-THESIS-2018-360 "Studies of rare $B \to K π μ μ$ decays using the LHCb experiment", took a job in software
Cayo Costa Sobral CERN-THESIS-2019-246 "Measurement of the relative branching fractions of charmless three-body B⁺ decays at LHCb", took a job in software
Olli Lupton (Postdoctoral research fellow) moved to EPFL, working for the Blue Brain project
Edward Millard CERN-THESIS-2020-306 "Studies of the rare decays B⁰ (B_s⁰) → π⁺π⁻μ⁺μ⁻ with the LHCb experiment"
Niladri Sahoo (Research Fellow) moved to University of Birmingham
Arnau Brossa Gonzalo CERN-THESIS-2022-007 "First observation of $B^{0} \to {\bar{D}}^{*} (2007)^{0} K^{+} π^{-}$ and $B_{s}^{0} \to {\bar{D}}^{*} (2007)^{0} K^{-} π^{+}$ decays in LHCb", moved to Santiago de Compostela

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)