Heavy flavour physics at LHCb and development of vertexing with fast timing

The research studentship is set in the context of the LHCb experiment at CERN, which is a detector dedicated to the measurements of the forward region of proton-proton interactions. Most notably, LHCb is exceptionally apt for the study of heavy-flavour: those containing beauty and charm quarks. LHCb has been upgraded for Run 3 of LHC running, and it will cause a trebling of the dataset size in the next three years.

The data analysis part of the studentship will use the new data collected during those years. Specifically, the research topic will be an examination of the the coupling between the heaviest lepton and heaviest quarks. The huge datasets of LHCb allow decays involving these couplings to be studied with unprecedented detail.

Techniques developed during Run 1&2 will be employed and extended as the investigation dictates.

The studentship will contain a significant hardware aspect. The Upgrade II of the LHCb experiment (2033+) is critically dependent on the advent of 4D vertexing in the future vertex detector. An intensive testbeam campaign is underway to demonstrate technologies build for fast-timing tracking applications and should culminate in measuring track time-stamping with a precision commensurate with 4D vertexing.

The student will join this testbeam effort and characterise the fast sensors being developed by UK silicon industrial partners. As a contribution, the student will pick up some maintenance responsibilities for the testbeam software.