LHCb hybrid photon detectors and sensitivity to flavour specific asymmetry in neutral B-Meson mixing
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Date
2009Author
Lambert, Robert William
Metadata
Abstract
The Large Hadron Collider started operation this year, 2008. LHCb is a precision
heavy-flavour experiment at this collider. The precision of LHCb is greatly aided
by the LHCb Ring Imaging Cherenkov system for the separation and identification
of charged hadrons. This system uses pixel Hybrid Photon Detectors, an innovative
new technology for single photon imaging. The simulation and testing of these
photon detectors are reported and discussed. The photodetectors were measured to
have reached or exceeded the specifications in key areas. In particular, the detector
quantum efficiencies far exceed expectations, by a relative 27 %. The precision of
LHCb will be used to examine CP-violation and rare decays of B-mesons. A key
part of the physics programme will be a measurement of the CP-violating flavour
specific asymmetry in neutral B-meson mixing. This asymmetry is expected to be
very small in the Standard Model, of order 10-4, however it is very sensitive to new
physics, which can increase the asymmetry dramatically. We present an improved
event selection and a novel method to control systematics. This will enable us to
make a world-leading measurement of this parameter in one nominal year of data
taking (2 fb-1).