An international team of physicists has published ground-breaking research on the decay of subatomic particles called kaons – which could change how scientists understand the formation of the universe.
Professor Christopher Sachrajda, from the Southampton Theory Astrophysics and Gravity Research Centre at the University of Southampton, has helped to devise the first calculation of how the behaviour of kaons differs when matter is swapped out for antimatter, known as direct “CP” symmetry violation.
Should the calculation not match experimental results, it would be conclusive evidence of new, unknown phenomena that lie outside of the Standard Model—physicists’ present understanding of the fundamental particles and the forces between them.
The current result, reported in Physical Review Letters, does not yet indicate such a difference between experiment and theory, but scientists expect the precision of the calculation to improve dramatically now that they’ve proven they can tackle the task.
The target of the present calculation is a phenomenon that is particularly elusive: a one-part-in-a-million difference between the matter and antimatter decay strengths. The calculation determines the size of the symmetry violating effect as predicted by the Standard Model.
Professor Sachrajda, said: “It is particularly important to compare Standard Model predictions for tiny subtle effects, such as the matter-antimatter asymmetry in kaon decays, with experimental measurements. The small size of the effects increases the chance that new, as yet not understood, phenomena may be uncovered in such a comparison. This motivates our quest for ever more precise theoretical predictions, a quest being made possible by new theoretical developments as well as access to more powerful supercomputers.”
Results from the first, less difficult, part of this calculation were reported by the same group in 2012 and was the subject of the theses by two Southampton PhD research students, Drs Elaine Goode and Tadeusz Janowski. However, it is only now, with completion of the second part of this calculation—which required more than 200 million core processing hours on supercomputers —that a comparison with the measured size of direct CP violation can be made.
Physicists’ present understanding of the universe requires that particles and their antiparticles (which are identical but have opposite charges) behave differently. Only with matter-antimatter asymmetry can they hope to explain why the universe, which was created with equal parts of matter and antimatter, is filled mostly with matter today.
The first experimental evidence for the matter-antimatter asymmetry, known as CP violation, was discovered in 1964 at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in the United States. This was built upon to a more accurate degree in 2000, to uncover direct CP violation – a tiny effect which only affects a few particle decays in a million. Although the Standard Model does successfully relate the matter-antimatter asymmetries, this is insufficient to explain the dominance of matter over antimatter in the universe today.
“This suggests that a new mechanism must be responsible for the preponderance of matter of which we are made,” said Christopher Kelly, a member of the team from the RIKEN BNL Research Center (RBRC). “This one-part-per-million, direct CP violation may be a good place to first see it. The approximate agreement between this new calculation and the 2000 experimental results suggests that we need to look harder, which is exactly what the team performing this calculation plans to do.”
Read more: Ground-breaking research could challenge underlying principles of physics
The Latest on: Ground-breaking research
[google_news title=”” keyword=”Ground-breaking research” num_posts=”10″ blurb_length=”0″ show_thumb=”left”]
via Google News
The Latest on: Ground-breaking research
- Intelligent Vending Machines Market To Reach USD 86.3 Billion By 2032 | DataHorizzon Researchon May 4, 2024 at 11:40 pm
The intelligent vending machines market was valued at USD 24.7 Billion in 2023 and is anticipated to grow CAGR at 14.9% to reach USD 86.3 Billion by 2032.Fort Collins, Colorado, May 05, 2024 (GLOBE ...
- DataX demonstrates AI prowess: Leading AI scientists showcase breakthroughs in LLM research across global forumson May 2, 2024 at 8:42 pm
Here are the details of the three research studies conducted by SCB DataX Co., Ltd: "Birbal: An Efficient 7B Instruct-Model Fine-Tuned with Curated Datasets": At the Data-centric Machine Learning ...
- Ora and Singapore Eye Research Institute Unveil Groundbreaking Partnership to Propel Ophthalmology Innovation Globallyon May 2, 2024 at 1:41 am
BOSTON & SINGAPORE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Ora, Inc., the foremost global ophthalmology contract research organization (CRO), today announced a strategic, exclusive partnership with the Singapore Eye ...
- Groundbreaking research sheds light on severe weather predictionon May 2, 2024 at 1:09 am
PERLIS worked its mission in Region 8, diving into the heart of severe weather events to gather crucial data aimed at helping tornado prediction.
- ‘Extraordinarily accurate;’ Groundbreaking research could help detect concussions with blood teston April 30, 2024 at 3:29 pm
The Abbott i-STAT TBI blood test is extraordinarily accurate well above 95 percent in giving us concrete data about a patient with a concussion or traumatic brain injury,” ...
- USC Scientists Rewrite Kidney Research With Groundbreaking Cell Cultivationon April 30, 2024 at 8:00 am
Researchers at USC have advanced kidney research by developing a new method to cultivate nephron progenitor cells from human stem cells. This method simplifies the process and enhances applications in ...
- 30p pill taken by millions 'could slash risk of Alzheimer's', groundbreaking research findson April 29, 2024 at 7:14 am
A 30p pill taken by millions of diabetics can halve their risk of Alzheimer's, researchers say in a study on the drug Actos - also known medically as pioglitazone ...
- Delaying menopause: Groundbreaking women’s health research underwayon April 25, 2024 at 2:33 pm
From hot flashes and mood shifts to more serious symptoms, menopause can be a challenging chapter for many women. Now, a Yale scientist hopes to re-calculate the average age of onset using a technique ...
- Will Townsendon April 22, 2024 at 4:59 pm
NTT Research, based in Silicon Valley, is pursuing potentially groundbreaking research in vital areas including all-optical networking and enhanced data security. Telecom analyst Will Townsend ...
- Groundbreaking Research on MAGE Proteins Offers New Hope for Resistant Cancerson April 22, 2024 at 6:55 am
Recent research by the Bhogaraju Group at EMBL Grenoble has uncovered the mechanisms by which the MAGE family of proteins, known for their role in promoting cancer, attach to their targets. This disco ...
via Bing News