Physicists Measure Differences Between Matter and Anti-Matter
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Among other things, particle physicists from TU Dortmund University are also conducting research at the most powerful particle accelerator in the world, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, in Switzerland. Researchers from around the globe are hoping to gain new insights into the elementary structure of matter with the help of the collisions generated in the LHC. As part of its work within the LHCb experiment, a team led by Professor Johannes Albrecht has now measured the differences between matter and antimatter with the highest degree of precision – and recently published its findings in the prestigious journal “Physical Review Letters”.
In the LHC particle accelerator, protons are accelerated to almost the speed of light and made to collide. This produces a large number of short-lived elementary particles, whose tracks and decays are recorded, for example, by the LHCb detector. In conjunction with this, the team from the Department of Physics has now been able to conduct groundbreaking measurements and has published its findings as an “Editors Suggestion” in the prestigious journal Physical Review Letters. The researchers have measured a specific system known as B0 oscillation, where B0 mesons alternate between a particle and an antiparticle identity. This oscillation is very fast; it takes place around eighty billion times per second. “In the process, an asymmetry between particles and antiparticles develops that is particularly interesting for us,” explains Vukan Jevtic, who is studying for his doctoral degree at TU Dortmund University. “We have now been able to measure –with unprecedented precision – the natural constants that describe the different behavior of matter and antimatter.”
The results corroborate previous measurements and thus also the Standard Model of particle physics, which describes differences between matter and antimatter in the interaction of individual particles. With their experiments, physicists are attempting to describe the asymmetry of matter and antimatter by means of particle physics measurements. What is special about the new measurements is that the analysis was conducted exclusively by three doctoral candidates from Dortmund: Vukan Jevtic, Dr. Patrick Mackowiak and Gerwin Meier. Vukan Jevtic presented the team’s findings to a global audience for the first time at a CERN seminar in the summer of 2023. The working group led by physicist Professor Bernhard Spaan, who passed away unexpectedly in 2021, started the measurement work, and the working group led by Professor Johannes Albrecht has now completed it.