More than 100 researchers from across the world have come together for the two-day workshop on "Hints for New Physics from Flavor Decays", which was held on March 20th and 21st at KEK.
"Flavors" of elementary particles distinguish the heavy particles that are produced in accelerators, such as b quark, c quark, s quark and tau lepton, from lighter ones, such as u quark, d quark and electron (the lightest lepton), which form ordinary matter. These heavy particles immediately decay into lighter particles, and their decay processes have been studied in various accelerator-based experiments including the Belle experiment at KEK. Moreover, new experiments results are anticipated at J-PARC, and an extensive upgrade of the Belle experiment is also planned.
By investigating the flavor decay processes in great detail, various experimental groups have reported a number of experimental results indicating new physics beyond the Standard Model which is built upon the Kobayashi-Maskawa theory. The participants at the workshop discussed actively how these existing hints should be interpreted and how the future experiments should proceed.
