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Image: ESO, R. Fosburymore

LHCb discovers a new type of tetraquark at CERN

The LHCb collaboration has observed an exotic particle made up of four charm quarks for the first time

Teams of researchers from EPFL and University of Zurich are members of the LHCb collaboraiton and have made major contributions to the construction and operation of the detector

Illustration of a tetraquark composed of two charm quarks and two charm antiquarks, detected for the first time by LHCb collaboration at CERN.
Image: LHCb, CERN.

The LHCb collaboration has observed a type of four-quark particle never seen before. The discovery, presented at a recent seminar at CERN and described in a paper posted today on the preprint server, is likely to be the first of a previously undiscovered class of particles.

The finding will help physicists better understand the complex ways in which quarks bind themselves together into composite particles such as the ubiquitous protons and neutrons that are found inside atomic nuclei.

more information: follow this link for the CERN Press release and the LHCb official webpage

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Swiss Institute of Particle Physics (CHIPP)
c/o Prof. Dr. Ben Kilminster
UZH
Department of Physics
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8057 Zürich
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