eta_b Discovery
Last December, when BaBar found out that Congressional budget cuts would cut our last data-taking run from 9 months to about 3 months this year, the experiment decided to immediately shift priorities to resonances other than the Y(4S), where we had been running since 1999. The logic was that the small fractional increase in Y(4S)->BBbar data would not improve existing measurements much, while data collected elsewhere could allow totally new measurements to be made. We are now enjoying the results of the data taken at the Y(3S) -- the discovery of the ground state of the system of a b quark bound to an anti-b quark (bottomonium). It is not a surprise that it exists, but it had never been observed before.
In retrospect, I should have tried to get Veronique in the picture. Dang.
You can read the paper here: arxiv.org/abs/0807.1086
Tenuous Link: bottom->bottomonium (a little explanation here)
eta_b Discovery
Last December, when BaBar found out that Congressional budget cuts would cut our last data-taking run from 9 months to about 3 months this year, the experiment decided to immediately shift priorities to resonances other than the Y(4S), where we had been running since 1999. The logic was that the small fractional increase in Y(4S)->BBbar data would not improve existing measurements much, while data collected elsewhere could allow totally new measurements to be made. We are now enjoying the results of the data taken at the Y(3S) -- the discovery of the ground state of the system of a b quark bound to an anti-b quark (bottomonium). It is not a surprise that it exists, but it had never been observed before.
In retrospect, I should have tried to get Veronique in the picture. Dang.
You can read the paper here: arxiv.org/abs/0807.1086
Tenuous Link: bottom->bottomonium (a little explanation here)