Dr. Daniel Johnson, MIT, guest of Prof. Thomas Kuhr, LMU, represents the LHCb experiment in the Heavy Flavor Averaging Group (HFLAV) on B decays to open or hidden charm (b2charm).
Abstract:
From the protons and neutrons in the chair you're sitting on, to the constituents of the farthest star you might see tonight, most of the visible stuff in the Universe consists of quarks bunched together to form 'hadrons'. But, hidden in plain sight, is one of the most awkward aspects of modern particle physics: although we possess a theory -- quantum chromodynamics (QCD) -- which defines, in principle, how quarks bind to form hadrons, real-life calculations with that theory are fiendishly difficult and accurate predictions are often impossible to obtain. The implications of this uncertainty reach across particle physics. I will describe how LHC data have begun a revolution in the understanding of hadronisation, and the implications that could have for searches for 'New Physics'. Next, realising that visible matter accounts for only about 15% of the matter in the Universe, we will turn our focus to the remaining 85%, so called 'dark matter'. Although direct searches for a particle accounting for dark matter have so far drawn a blank, we'll discuss a novel dark matter paradigm and how LHC data might be leveraged to shed light on this mysterious topic.
Thomas Kuhr (LMU) and ORIGINS Excellence Cluster