UNM Physicists have Observed a New Particle State
September 9, 2013
UNM particle physicists Prabhakar Palni, Igor Gorelov, and Sally Seidel have observed a new particle state, called the Lambda_b*, with a mass of 5959.22 +/- 0.84 MeV. This state, recorded in data by the CDF Experiment at Fermilab, is made up of two light quarks (u and d) and a heavy (b) quark. It is an example of a class of particles known as orbitally excited resonances.
The observation of this particle provides a new benchmark in the spectrum of states to which theoretical models can be compared. Measurements of the masses of these states are important for our understanding of Quantum Chromodynamics, the fundamental theory of strongly interacting matter.
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