Physicists find penguin decays in Japan
April 1st, 2011 | by Malamalama Staff | Published in Research News
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.
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.
Tags: physics, quark, UH Manoa, Vol. 36 No. 2