A challenge to lepton universality in B-meson decays

Ciezarek, Gregory; Sevilla, Manuel Franco; Hamilton, Brian; Kowalewski, Robert; Kuhr, Thomas ; Lueth, Vera und Sato, Yutaro (2017): A challenge to lepton universality in B-meson decays. In: Nature, Bd. 546, Nr. 7657: S. 227-233

Abstract

One of the key assumptions of the standard model of particle physics is that the interactions of the charged leptons, namely electrons, muons and taus, differ only because of their different masses. Whereas precision tests comparing processes involving electrons and muons have not revealed any definite violation of this assumption, recent studies of B-meson decays involving the higher-mass tau lepton have resulted in observations that challenge lepton universality at the level of four standard deviations. A confirmation of these results would point to new particles or interactions, and could have profound implications for our understanding of particle physics.

• Dokumententyp: Zeitschriftenartikel
• Fakultät: Physik
• Themengebiete: 500 Naturwissenschaften und Mathematik > 530 Physik
• ISSN: 0028-0836
• Sprache: Englisch