Physicists find evidence of ‘zeptoverse’ in search for new physics

A UK-led team of physicists has found evidence of an extremely rare particle decay that could offer clues to undiscovered physics at extraordinarily small scales, the University of Cambridge announced Tuesday.

Researchers using the upgraded Large Hadron Collider beauty (LHCb) experiment at CERN near Geneva detected signs of a beauty particle, which contains a beauty quark, decaying into two particles called muons.

After more than four decades of searching, the result marks the first time a single experiment has produced evidence of the rare decay. If confirmed, it would be the rarest particle decay ever observed, CERN said.

Beauty quarks are exotic counterparts of the up and down quarks that make up ordinary atomic matter.

Particles containing beauty quarks typically exist for about 1.5 trillionths of a second before decaying, allowing scientists to study physical processes occurring at extremely small distance scales.

The decay identified by researchers, known as "Bd to mu mu," occurs when a beauty particle transforms into two particles called muons.

"This process only happens for one in every ten billion beauty particles, so it's incredibly difficult to find,” said Dr. Harry Cliff of the University of Cambridge's Cavendish Laboratory, who led the analysis.

The Large Hadron Collider can probe distances of around 100 zeptometers. A zeptometer is a trillionth of a billionth of a meter.

"The results could open the door to a strange new world known as the zeptoverse, where particles that could help explain mysteries like dark matter and how matter came into existence during the Big Bang may be hiding," Cambridge said.

The Large Hadron Collider has so far not produced definitive evidence of many of the new particles predicted by theories extending the Standard Model of particle physics. This has led researchers to consider whether new physics could exist at even smaller distance scales.

The LHCb experiment was specifically designed to study particles containing beauty quarks, which are produced in large numbers when high-energy particles collide inside the collider.

The research involved about 20 physicists from the UK, Germany, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands.

The findings, which have not yet been peer-reviewed, were scheduled to be presented at CERN on Tuesday.