Grant: Subatomic Physics Envelope - Project

Belle II will probe the 'flavour sector' of particle physics at the high-luminosity SuperKEKB e+e- collider, located at the KEK laboratory in Japan. Physics operations will start in late 2016 or 2017, with the goal of collecting 50 inverse attobarns of data by 2023, which is thirty times the combined integrated luminosity of the two previous generation B-factories, PEP-II at SLAC and KEKB at KEK. This precision-frontier facility will open an exciting window on new energy scales beyond the reach of existing colliders, including the LHC, by virtue of quantum loops corrections that are sensitive to very massive, and as yet undiscovered, particles. These hypothesized particles manifest themselves in precision measurements of processes involving bottom and charm quarks and tau leptons, such as CP violation and other asymmetries, rare decays, and processes that are forbidden within our current understanding of physics. If new physics is discovered at the LHC, the wide range of measurements possible at Belle II will illuminate its structure in ways that are not possible at a hadron collider. If new physics is not discovered at the LHC, Belle II measurements will provide critical guidance towards beyond-the-standard-model theories by either discovering new phenomena and deviations from standard model expectations, or by excluding possible models of new physics. The group will focus on studies of leptonic and semileptonic B decays, including B->tau nu and B->D(*)tau nu; searches for evidence of new physics in lepton flavour violating decays of the tau lepton; searches for evidence of a low mass Higgs and searches for evidence of dark matter in these data.<br /> <br /> The funding requested will be used to fund personnel, travel and materials and supplies to prepare for commissioning and data collection of Belle II and to complete research and development on the possible upgrade of the Belle II forward endcap calorimeter. The group will contribute to the reconstruction software development, feature extraction, and commissioning of the Belle II electromagnetic calorimeter. The group is also contributing to the development of fast (ns) sensitive electronics for the calorimeter. The group is responsible for the accelerator background and shielding studies related to the calorimeter. During the commissioning phases of the accelerator the group is responsible for measuring the thermal neutron flux and photon flux at the position of the inner radius of the calorimeter. The group is also providing the permanent photon background monitoring system which will be provided to the accelerator team and used to tune the machine. The group will provide the Canadian share of computing resources and contribute to the development of cloud computing software for Belle II.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />