By Thomas Kuhr
Springer Hardback: £117 €137.10
Paperback: £109 €119.19
The Tevatron collider operated by Fermilab close to Chicago was – until the LHC at CERN took over – the most powerful particle accelerator on Earth, colliding protons and antiprotons with, finally, a centre-of-mass energy of almost 2 TeV. Among many interesting results, the key discovery was the observation of the top quark by the CDF and DØ collaborations in 1995. In pp– collisions, huge numbers of B and D mesons are also produced, offering sensitive probes for testing the quark-flavour sector of the Standard Model, which is described by the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa (CKM) matrix. A closely related topic concerns violation of the charge-parity (CP) symmetry, which can be accommodated through a complex phase in the CKM matrix. Physics beyond the Standard Model may leave footprints in the corresponding observables.
In this branch of particle physics, the key aspect addressed at the upgraded Tevatron (Run-II) was the physics potential of the B0s mesons, which consist of an anti-bottom quark and a strange quark. Since these mesons and their antiparticles were not produced in the e+e– B factories that operated at the Υ(4S) resonance, they fall in the domain of B-physics experiments at hadron colliders, although the Belle experiment could get some access to these particles with the KEK B-factory running at the Υ(5S) resonance. Since the Tevatron stopped operation in autumn 2011, the experimental exploration of the B0s system has been fully conducted at the LHC, with its B-decay experiment LHCb.
The CDF and DØ collaborations did pioneering work in B physics, which culminated in the observation of B0s – B–0s mixing in 2006, first analyses of CP-violating observables provided by the decay B0s → Jψφ around 2008, and intriguing measurements of the dimuon charge asymmetry by DØ in 2010, which probes CP violation in B0s – B0s oscillations.
The author of this book has been a member of the CDF collaboration for many years and gives the reader a guided tour through the flavour-physics landscape at the Tevatron. It starts with historical remarks and then focuses on the quark-flavour sector of the Standard Model with the CKM matrix and the theoretical description of mixing and CP violation, before discussing the Tevatron collider, its detectors and experimental techniques. After these introductory chapters, the author brings the reader in touch with key results, starting with measurements of lifetimes and branching ratios of weak b-hadron decays and their theoretical treatment, followed by a discussion of flavour oscillations, where B0s – B0s mixing is the highlight. An important part of the book deals with various manifestations of CP violation and the corresponding probes offered by the B0s system, where B0s → Jψφ and the dimuon charge-asymmetry are the main actors. Last, rare decays are discussed, putting the spotlight on the B0s → μ+μ– channel, one of the rarest decay processes that nature has to offer. While the book has a strong focus on the B0s system, it also addresses Λb decays and charm physics.
This well written book with its 161 pages is enjoyable to read and offers a fairly compact way to get an overview of the B-physics programme conducted at the Tevatron in the past decade. A reader familiar with basic concepts of particle physics should be able to deal easily with the content. It appears suited to experimental PhD students making first contact with this topic, but experienced researchers from other branches of high-energy physics may also find the book interesting and useful. Topics such as the rare decay B0s → μ+μ–, which has recently appeared as a first 3.5σ signal in the data from LHCb, and measurements of CP violation in B0s decays will continue to be hot topics in the LHC physics programme during this decade, complementing the direct searches for new particles at the ATLAS and CMS detectors.
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