Subatomic particle seen changing to antiparticle and back for the first time
Physicists have proved that a subatomic particle can switch into its antiparticle alter-ego and back again, in a new discovery revealed today. An extraordinarily precise measurement made by Oxford researchers using the LHCb experiment at CERN has provided the first evidence that charm mesons can change into their antiparticle and back again.
For more than 10 years, scientists have known that charm mesons, subatomic particles that contain a quark and an antiquark, can travel as a mixture of their particle and antiparticle states, a phenomenon called mixing. However, this new result shows for the first time that they can oscillate between the two states.
Armed with this new evidence, scientists can try to tackle some of the biggest questions in physics around how particles behave outside of the Standard Model. One being, whether these transitions are caused by unknown particles not predicted by the guiding theory.
The research, submitted today to Physical Review Letters and available on arXiv, received funding from the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC).
