Charm physics
Our group has always been heavily involved in charm physics, also covering coordination roles within the LHCb collaboration. Currently we are involved in several key measurements involving extremely rare decays of the neutral D meson into two hadrons and two leptons. These decays have become of great interest as a possible ways to search for CP violation in the charm sector and new physics in general. Thanks to the LHCb detector capabilities, we were able to measure the branching fractions of these decays and perform the first angular analysis.
Heavy Ion Physics
Despite being optimised for the physics of beauty and charm physics, since a few years LHCb is also successfully studying the physics of heavy ions collecting proton-lead and lead-lead data as they are delivered by the LHC for one month a year. In addition, LHCb has a unique fixed target set up thanks to its capabilities of injecting noble gases in the interaction region and recording the collisions of proton and lead beams with these gases with the detector. In Cagliari we pioneered these measurements thanks to an european grant to (ERC) which allowed us to be directly involved in the preparation, collection and analyses of data collected in these scenario. In particular we are involved in the physics of peripheral and ultra-peripheral lead-lead collisions, in quarkonia and open charm and beauty production in proton-lead collisions. We are also studying future developments for the LHCb detector after 2024.
CP violation in the B system
Recently, our group has become involved in a new line of research, in which we also cover coordination roles within the LHCb Collaboration, that comprises the study of CP violation in the beauty sector. In particular, we analyse B meson decays with quarkonia resonances in the final state and we focus on the determination of their decay times. Thanks to the excellent precision of the LHCb vertex detector we can obtain the world’s best measurements in this sector, putting stringent limits on possible New Physics effects.
Muon detector
Our group always had and still has a strong involvement in the development and maintenance of the muon detector, in particular:
- Detector for the inner region of the muon stations, able to cope with high particle flux (500kHz/cm2). After a careful R&D programme, a triple Gas Electron Multiplier (GEM) with pad readout has been proposed, designed and built and had been operated successfully in the past years.
- The design and production of the electronics for the front-end system of the entire muon detector (122k channels). Two chips (DIALOG e SYNC) have been designed and build on our
laboratory of electronics. Our involvement in the R&D for the muon system continues in the light of the LHCb Upgrade, which will collect data stargin from 2021.