Contributor info: Dr Sean Benson

Sean Benson, Adrián Casais Vidal, Xabier Cid Vidal, Albert Puig Navarro

SciPost Phys. 7, 062 (2019) · published 13 November 2019 | Toggle abstract · pdf

ALP-mediated decays and other as-yet unobserved $B$ decays to di-photon final states are a challenge to select in hadron collider environments due to the large backgrounds that come directly from the $pp$ collision. We present the strategy implemented by the LHCb experiment in 2018 to efficiently select such photon pairs. A fast neural network topology, implemented in the LHCb real-time selection framework achieves high efficiency across a mass range of $4-20$ GeV$/c^{2}$. We discuss implications and future prospects for the LHCb experiment.

Sean Benson on behalf of the LHCb collaboration

SciPost Phys. Proc. 1, 011 (2019) · published 19 February 2019 | Toggle abstract · pdf

In the Standard Model, the three charged leptons are identical copies of each other, apart from mass differences. Experimental tests of this feature in semileptonic decays of b-hadrons are highly sensitive to New Physics particles which preferentially couple to the 2nd and 3rd generations of leptons. A review of the latest lepton universality tests in semileptonic $b\to c$ transitions at LHCb is reported.