Evidence suggests subatomic particles could defy the standard model

Evidence suggests subatomic particles could defy the standard model
August 27, 2015

In this event display from the LHCb experiment at CERN's Large Hadron Collider, proton-proton collisions at the interaction point (far left) result in a shower of leptons and other charged particles. The yellow and green lines are computer-generated reconstructions of the particles' trajectories through the layers of the LHCb detector. Credit: CERN/LHCb Collaboration
-----
The Standard Model of particle physics, which explains most of the known behaviors and interactions of fundamental subatomic particles, has held up remarkably well over several decades. This far-reaching theory does have a few shortcomings, however—most notably that it doesn't account for gravity. In hopes of revealing new, non-standard particles and forces, physicists have been on the hunt for conditions and behaviors that directly violate the Standard Model.

Now, a team of physicists working at CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has found new hints of particles—leptons, to be more precise—being treated in strange ways not predicted by the Standard Model. The discovery, scheduled for publication in the September 4, 2015 issue of the journal Physical Review Letters, could prove to be a significant lead in the search for non-standard phenomena.

---(snip)

"While these two results taken together are very promising, the observed phenomena won't be considered a true violation of the Standard Model without further experiments to verify our observations," said co-author Gregory Ciezarek, a physicist at the Dutch National Institute for Subatomic Physics (NIKHEF).

"We are planning a range of other measurements. The LHCb experiment is taking more data during the second run right now. We are working on upgrades to the LHCb detector within the next few years," Jawahery said. "If this phenomenon is corroborated, we will have decades of work ahead. It could point theoretical physicists toward new ways to look at standard and non-standard physics."

With the discovery of the Higgs boson—the last major missing piece of the Standard Model—during the first LHC run, physicists are now looking for phenomena that do not conform to Standard Model predictions. Jawahery and his colleagues are excited for the future, as the field moves into unknown territory.

"Any knowledge from here on helps us learn more about how the universe evolved to this point. For example, we know that dark matter and dark energy exist, but we don't yet know what they are or how to explain them. Our result could be a part of that puzzle," Jawahery said. "If we can demonstrate that there are missing particles and interactions beyond the Standard Model, it could help complete the picture."

(more at link)
http://phys.org/news/2015-08-evidence-subatomic-particles-defy-standard.html

http://phys.org/news/2012-05-billard-game-atom-physicists-ionization.html