So, do you see any deviations with respect to the standard model in
this channel or elsewhere?
>> So we don't see deviations in B_s -> µ+ µ- but
we do see deviations with respect to the standard model elsewhere.
>> Could you tell us more about that, actually?
>> Yes, so one of the things we test at LHCb is
the lepton flavor universality in b decays.
So, as the students know, the electron, the muon and
the tau, they behave exactly the same way apart from their mass,
which comes from their different interactions with the HIggs boson.
But apart of that they behave exactly in the same way.
So if you have a branching ratio of a B meson decaying to charged leptons and
you factor out the effect of the mass in the phase space,
their branching ratios should be the same.
If you have a new particles, new virtual particles as I said before,
they might couple differently to electron, muon and tau and
they would spoil the lepton universality of the standard model.
So, what we see is exactly a departure from this lepton universality,
in some B decays and by now,
we need more data to be certain of this deviation but
it certainly looks like
an intriguing pattern we are seeing.
>> Okay, well it is certainly interesting the breadth of the research program of LHCb.
What else have you discovered?
Could you tell us a bit more about that?
>> Yes, so in addition to search for new physics,
what we do is also to do spectroscopy, to measure properties of
particles, of hadrons predicted by the quark model. For instance,
by doing bump searches, as you do in ATLAS, but at lower masses.
We discover new excited states of D mesons and B mesons.
And in addition, we also do different analysis which are called amplitude
analysis that allows us to measure the quantum numbers of these particles.
For instance, the resonance X(3872) that was long thought to be a D meson molecule.
We could discard this hyphothesis exactly by measuring
the quantum numbers of this resonance.
And also relatively recently, we discovered two particles,
which are consistent with being neither baryons not mesons but pentaquarks.
So particles composed by four quarks and one anti-quark.
And this was a breaking ground results.
>> That sounds really exciting indeed.
But now how about the prospects of LHCb for the future?
>> So, most of our measurements first of all are dominated
by the statistical errors.
So it means that, in order
to exploit fully the LHC potential, we need more statistics.
And therefore we are working to prepare an upgrade of the LHCb
detector to run at higher luminosity.
In addition as I said, in most measurements
we do see a striking agreement with respect to standard model and
prediction, but we also see some deviation.
So our hope is that in the future we will reveal a pattern of
this deviation that can lead us to the discovery of new physics.
>> The prospects for LHCb to be are really exciting from what you are telling us.
So, we really hope that you reveal this interesting patterns indeed.
Thank you very much
for this interview, Nico.
>> Thank you Anna, bye.