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The LHCb Experiment


Birmingham group: Prof. Nigel Watson, Dr Dan Johnson, Prof. Cristina Lazzeroni, Mr Marcus Madurai, Dr Niladri Sahoo, Dr Mark Slater, Mr Paul Swallow, Mr Dan Thompson
LHCb detector

LHCb is an experiment optimised to study b and c hadron decays at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, currently collecting and analysing data. Its primary goals are to study CP violation and to search for physics beyond the Standard Model, e.g. by measuring "rare" decays with very high precision.

LHCb is a general purpose detector with angular coverage between 10 and 250-300 mrad from the proton beam axis. It has excellent reconstruction of multiple vertices per event and measurement of proper decay times using silicon microstrip detectors, as well as particle identification provided by Ring Imaging Cherenkov detectors.

We have a wide range of physics interests and are always willing to consider others. We are active in novel searches for dark matter and in searches for extremely rare decays which, if observed, would be evidence for 'new' physics. Recent examples of our work include searching for physics beyond the standard model by making tests of lepton universality ("RK*" [1]), searching for "dark" photons [2], searching for rare decay modes of b baryons [3, 4], charmless decays of B mesons [5], and electroweak physics of gauge bosons [6, 7, 8, 9].

Our technical roles are related to detector simulation and data management/grid operations. We are contributing to the LHCbPR2 benchmarking and regression testing framework, developed previously by group members and now used to evaluate simulation and other applications, as well as individual physics-based tests. We are carrying out R\&D focussed on extremely precise silicon detectors and read-out systems for the ultra-high rate data-flow regime that are essential for the next (2033+) major upgrade of the LHCb detector.

For further information, see: