Kick-off of the Belle II Phase 3 Physics Run
March 25, 2019
The following news release was issued by the High Energy Accelerator Research Organization, known as KEK, in Japan, home of the Belle II experiment. The U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory provides the U.S. portion of the computing and data storage required for the Belle II experiment, taking advantage of the excellent capabilities of the Scientific Data Computing Center as demonstrated with the ATLAS and RHIC experiments. Raw data from Belle II will be transferred to Brookhaven Lab where it will be archived for safe-keeping, calibrated, and processed into a physics-ready data format. From there, scientists at Brookhaven will distribute the physics-ready data worldwide, enabling research by Brookhaven Lab physicists and Belle II collaborators around the world. In addition, Brookhaven Lab's Superconducting Magnet Division built superconducting corrector magnets as part of the SuperKEKB upgrade to enable the improved luminosity. For more information about Brookhaven’s role in this work, contact Karen McNulty Walsh, kmcnulty@bnl.gov, (631) 344-8350.
On March 25 19:44 (JST), 2019, electron-positron collisions have restarted at the SuperKEKB collider, and the Belle II experiment has now kicked off its physics data taking. Belle II is now fully instrumented with a state-of-the-art vertex detector, just in time for the start of the cherry blossom season in Japan.
The first stage of Phase 3 operation of the SuperKEKB project began successfully on March 11th with the circulation of electrons in one of SuperKEKB’s two accelerating rings, marking a major milestone in the development of Japan’s leading particle collider.
Today is the first time in Phase 3 that electrons and positrons have collided inside Belle II. Phase 2, which took place from March to July of 2018 was the “pilot run” of SuperKEKB and Belle II. Phase 3 will be the first physics run of the project, in which the Belle II experiment will take data with a fully equipped detector.
Belle II and SuperKEKB are poised to become the world’s first Super B factory facility. The KEKB accelerator, which operated from 1999 to 2010, currently holds the world record luminosity (which is a measure of the rate of collisions) for an electron-positron collider. SuperKEKB, its successor, plans to reach a luminosity 40 times greater. Belle II aims to accumulate 50 times more data than its predecessor, Belle, and to seek out new physics hidden in subatomic particles that could shed light on mysteries of the early universe.
Belle II will perform a broad range of extremely high precision and fundamental measurements in flavor physics, particularly of properties of the bottom quark, charm quark, and tau lepton. In recent years, there has been a great deal of excitement worldwide about a number of intriguing hints of new physics in the decays of B mesons, particles which contain bottom quarks. Over the coming decade Belle II will accumulate enough data to either confirm or rule out the existence of new physics in these decays. In addition, Belle II will carry out a number of unique searches for dark matter particles.
Contacts
Research contacts
Prof. Yutaka Ushiroda
Institute of Particle and Nuclear Studies (IPNS), KEK, Japan
yutaka.ushiroda@kek.jp
Prof. Kazunori Akai
Accelerator Laboratory, KEK, Japan akai@post.kek.jp
Belle II Contact in Japan
Prof. Toru Iijima
Belle II Outreach coordinator
Nagoya University Kobayashi-Maskawa Institute for the Origin of Particles and the Universe
iijima@hepl.phys.nagoya-u.ac.jp
Press contact
Hajime Hikino
Head, Public Relations Office, KEK, Japan
press@kek.jp
+81-29-879-6047
Background Information
Background information about SuperKEKB and Belle II, including a glossary of technical terms, is available at https://www.kek.jp/en/newsroom/2019/03/11/1600/
High resolution photos of SuperKEKB and Belle II are available at https://www.kek.jp/ja/imagearchive/2019/03/11/1600/ and https://www.kek.jp/ja/imagearchive/2019/03/25/2030/ for use with appropriate credit.
2019-14469 | INT/EXT | Newsroom
