New LHC evidence supports Standard Model

Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – @BednarChuck

After nearly three decades worth of waiting, researchers working at the world’s biggest particle collider confirmed on Wednesday that they had observed an extremely rare event that provides new evidence to support the so-called Standard Model of physics.

The event in question, according to Phys.org, was the decay of the neutral B meson into a pair of muons, which are the heavier relatives of electrons. Neutral B mesons are unstable composites of two types of particles known as quarks that are bound together by the “strong” force.

The fact that they decay into muons was predicted under the Standard Model, but scientists had been searching for evidence confirming this hypothesis since the mid-1980s. These observations, reported in the journal Nature, provide that proof and strengthen support for the framework used by scientists to explain the forces and particles of the cosmos, the website added.

Findings support the Standard Model of physics

One reason it’s been so difficult to find such evidence is that neutral B mesons are only produced in extreme conditions (such as particle colliders) and are very difficult and costly to research. Another is the fact that the transition into muons tends to occur in only four out of every one billion “decays.”

However, two research teams from the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) working on the Large Hadron Collider were each working on making these transitions happen. They released individual results in July 2013, but it wasn’t until experts analyzed the combined data that they were able to reach the accuracy threshold necessary to claim a discovery.

In their paper, the CERN authors explained that they reported the first-ever observations of this decay “with a statistical significance exceeding six standard deviations,” making it “the best measurement so far of its branching fraction.” Furthermore, they added that they had also found evidence of the phenomenon “with a statistical significance of three standard deviations.”

“Both measurements are statistically compatible with standard model predictions and allow stringent constraints to be placed on theories beyond the standard model,” they continued. They added that their discovery showed that the Standard Model had passed another critical test but still had obstacles to overcome, as it still “does not address some profound questions about the nature of the Universe.”

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