Patrick Koppenburg 🐧 Profile picture
@_nikhef physicist on @lhcbexperiment at @CERN. πŸ§πŸ“·πŸŽ“πŸ’»πŸ’«. H/EW/t factory WG convener at #ECFA. πŸƒπŸ‡¨πŸ‡­πŸ—³οΈ: @PKoppenburgCH 🟦: https://t.co/yj052Zld0y…
Jul 18 β€’ 19 tweets β€’ 7 min read
Very complex and somewhat inconclusive LHCb result posted today. A #Thread 🧡 A bit of context: 20 years ago the BaBar and Belle experiments were seeing particles that looked like they were made of charm and anti-charm quarks but didn't fit anywhere. The first was the X(3872) in 2003. Image
May 28 β€’ 17 tweets β€’ 6 min read
A #thread on penguins. The ones in particle processes.

What's the difference between these two drawings? [1/17]
Image
Image
Both are Feynman diagrams, a tool used to compute probabilities of particle processes.

In both cases a beauty (b) quark becomes a strange quark (s) and two muons (ΞΌ). The difference is inside, which is the stuff we do not see. [2/17]
Aug 24, 2023 β€’ 13 tweets β€’ 4 min read
A few more comments on the new Belle II result on B⁺→K⁺νν̅ and the fact that it comes out above the Standard Model prediction. 🧡 First this is an amazing analysis. The signal B meson decays to a kaon and all the rest is invisible. Your signal is a single kaon. What saves Belle is that they know there is another B meson in the event. And they try to understand this as well as possible. Image
Oct 18, 2022 β€’ 26 tweets β€’ 10 min read
It's been a while since I last wrote about lepton universality. The Standard Model assumes that all charged leptons - electrons, muons, taus - couple identically to all other particles except to the Higgs (that likes mass). Today we revisit that. A #Thread.
[1/21 - so far] Image There are some indications it may not be the case. In processes involving decays of b quarks to one or two muons we see discrepancies with the expectations. (Plots at nikhef.nl/~pkoppenb/anom…). Image
Apr 12, 2021 β€’ 21 tweets β€’ 8 min read
A #Thread about the most beautiful plot particle physics produces: The Bₛ⁰ meson oscillation plot: A showcase of quantum mechanics in action. π–π‘πšπ­ 𝐒𝐬 𝐒𝐭? The Bₛ⁰ meson is an unstable particle made of an anti-b quark and an s quark. It can transform into its anti-particle the B̅ₛ⁰ meson ("Bee-ess-bar"), made of a b quark and an anti-s quark.
Mar 23, 2021 β€’ 33 tweets β€’ 12 min read
Today is a special day for @LHCbExperiment and for me. A measurement which I started long ago stays stubbornly away from the theoretical expectation.

Is it time to open this bottle? It says "discovery" 🧐. Let's be cautions. Today's result will be presented by @yukawacoupling at 11h CET. Join at indico.cern.ch/event/976688/

Dec 10, 2020 β€’ 21 tweets β€’ 8 min read
Today @LHCbExperiment reports the first observation of the Bₛ⁰ β†’ K⁻μ⁺ν process, in which a beauty-strange B meson decays to a muon and a strange kaon. It gives us access to Vub. A #thread. Vub is the weak-interaction coupling of beauty (b) to up (u) quarks. It's one of the fundamental transitions of the weak interaction. Image
Mar 21, 2019 β€’ 23 tweets β€’ 9 min read
Exciting news! @LHCbExperiment is announcing the observation of CP violation in charm decays. indico.cern.ch/event/807176/ What does that mean? A somewhat long thread. The laws of physics that affect us (gravity and electrodynamics) are left-right symmetric. One of the pictures below is mirror reversed. Physics doesn't let you tell which. (Social constructs may help: numbers, letters, watches, is the man left-handed?...)