Physicists find penguin decays in Japan

April 1st, 2011  |  by  |  Published in Research News

 A drawing of the Belle detector

The Belle detector at the KEKB particle collider, located in Tsukuba, Japan, has been used to study a wide variety of beauty quark decays, including the recently discovered rare penguin process.

The first observation of a new class of rare “penguin decays” of high energy particles called beauty quarks is the topic both of University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa student Kurtis Nishimura’s doctoral dissertation and his paper published in the Dec. 10, 2010, Physical Review Letters.

Kurtis Nishimura headshot

Nishimura

Nishimura and UH Mānoa faculty and student colleagues analyzed b quarks produced in the Belle experiment at the KEKB particle accelerator in Japan.

Now a postdoctoral researcher in the UH Mānoa Department of Physics and Astronomy, he continues to be part of the UH team involved in the international collaboration that is continuing with the Belle II upgrade experiment expected to begin in 2014.

Read the abstract.


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