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Aleko talks W charge asymmetry

One of our Cornell graduate students giving a mostly chalkboard-based description of his analysis at CERN this morning. (A challenge for those of us used to presenting everything using PowerPoint!) Aleko measured the different rates of production of W+ and W- bosons at the LHC, which stems directly from the fact that each collision in the LHC is of two protons. Basically, since protons are positively charged, the collision of two of them is more likely to make a positively charged thing (W+) than a negatively charged thing. (In more technical language, each proton contains two positively-charged up quarks and only one negatively-charged down quark. Real experts will know that it's a bit more subtle than that, involving quarks pulled from the "sea" inside the proton.).

 

Aleko's precision measurement will help improve our understanding of the internal structure of the proton. The preliminary result is available here: cds.cern.ch/record/1563576?ln=en

 

Tenuous link: lesson

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Uploaded on September 12, 2013
Taken on September 12, 2013