3 ms·
The LHCb collaboration's own summary of the result: https://lhcb-public.web.cern.ch/Welcome.html#Deltamc https://lhcb-public.web.cern.ch/Welcome.html#Deltamc
by dukwon 5y ago
The LHCb collaboration's own summary of the result:
https://lhcb-public.web.cern.ch/Welcome.html#Deltamc https://lhcb-public.web.cern.ch/Welcome.html#Deltamc
- lamontcg 5y agoYeah this is much better than the title article. K-Kbar mixing was observed decades ago. The headline here should be about the first measurement of a mass asymmetry between matter and antimatter.
- dukwon 5y ago> The headline here should be about the first measurement of a mass asymmetry between matter and antimatter. The mass difference is not between particle and antiparticle, but between the mass eigenstates, which are not antiparticles of eachother. It's also not the first Δm to be measured. In fact, it was the last remaining one.
- lamontcg 5y agoSo if the mass eigenstates aren't different then you don't get mixing between the flavor eigenstates, so this is expected? And by measuring the frequency of the FCNCs then that is what gives them the difference between the mass eigenstates? (bear with me, its been 25 years since I decided to become a programmer instead...)
- dukwon 5y agoΔm is directly proportional to the frequency of the oscillation. (In natural units it is exactly the angular frequency: cos(Δm·t) appears in the decay rate) So indeed Δm=0 means no oscillation. You measure it by essentially counting the number of particle and antiparticle decays as a function of decay-time.
- tremon 5y agoWhat fascinates me is that these oscillations appear to be continuous. What is it exactly that they're measuring/showing in the decay plot? Shouldn't the state transitions be discrete events, and therefore the plot show a square wave instead of a sine?
- dukwon 5y agoThe time-dependent probability of being in either flavour eigenstate is sinusoidal. It's not like a ticking clock.
- ycreader 5y agohow did you get the #Deltamc in the link?