A particle detector assembled by University of Liverpool scientists has played a crucial role in enabling new evidence of an exceptionally rare particle decay at CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC), following a 42-year search.
The finding, announced by the international LHCb collaboration, provides the first evidence of the rarest decay of a 'beauty' particle ever seen at the LHC, opening up new opportunities to explore some of the most fundamental mysteries of the universe.
At the heart of the breakthrough is the upgraded LHCb experiment, which includes the Vertex Locator (VELO), a highly sophisticated silicon pixel detector assembled by researchers at the University of Liverpool.
The VELO plays a vital role in tracking particles produced in collisions at the LHC, enabling scientists to pinpoint precisely where particles are created and how they decay.
The detector was assembled by the Liverpool team as part of a major international effort to upgrade the LHCb experiment. It has helped transform the experiment's capabilities, enabling researchers to collect data at up to five times its previous rate and study extremely rare particle processes with unprecedented precision.
This enhanced capability has been instrumental in providing the wealth of data needed to investigate a particle decay that physicists have been searching for more than four decades.
The new result brings scientists closer to exploring what physicists call the 'Zeptoverse', a world of extraordinarily small distances, around a billionth of a trillionth of a metre, where previously undiscovered particles and forces of nature may be hiding.
The LHCb experiment studies short-lived particles containing beauty quarks, which are heavier relatives of the up and down quarks that make up much of the matter around us.
Beauty quarks are produced in huge numbers during collisions at the LHC but exist for just a fraction of a second before decaying into other particles.
Scientists have now found evidence of an exceptionally rare decay, known as 'Bd to mu mu', in which a beauty particle decays into two muons, heavier relatives of the electron. The process is predicted to occur only around once in every ten billion beauty particles.
The result has a statistical significance of 3.2 sigma, sufficient to constitute the first evidence of the decay, although below the five-sigma threshold required to claim a discovery in particle physics.
The analysis also produced the most precise measurements yet of another rare beauty-particle decay, known as 'Bs to mu mu', first observed by LHCb in 2015.
Liverpool's contribution to precision particle physics
The University of Liverpool is a longstanding member of the LHCb collaboration and has played an important role in the development of the experiment's upgraded detector technology.
The VELO detector, assembled at Liverpool, sits just five millimetres from the LHC beams and forms the first layer of the experiment's particle-tracking system.
Its exceptional precision allows scientists to reconstruct the paths of particles emerging from collisions and identify the locations at which short-lived particles decay. Since the upgraded LHCb detector began collecting data in 2024, the experiment has been able to record collisions at up to five times its previous rate.
Professor Tara Shears, from the University of Liverpool and the LHCb-UK spokesperson, said:
"That we can see such an incredibly rare decay, that has the potential to tell us so much about the universe, is testament to the skills, ingenuity and real craftsmanship of our talented staff who built the VELO. As this result shows, every member of LHCb can reap the rewards of the VELO's exquisite precision. "
Pushing the boundaries of our understanding
The result represents an important step forward in testing the Standard Model, the leading theory describing fundamental particles and their interactions.
Although the new measurements agree with the predictions of the Standard Model, studying such extraordinarily rare processes with increasing precision could help physicists identify signs of previously unknown particles or forces.
