Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-particle-physics-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2019/4/d/solution

In a proton-proton collision, associate the reconstructed neutral B meson with the accompanying opposite-side bottom hadron. A direct semileptonic decay tags a on that side and hence an initial , or , on the signal side. The opposite charged lepton tags the conjugate assignment. Charged kaons from the opposite-side decay chain and same-side fragmentation tracks can supply additional statistical flavour tagging information; the common CP final state alone does not reveal the production flavour.
A magnetic spectrometer with precise silicon vertex tracking, charged-particle identification and muon or electron identification is suitable. A forward geometry can exploit the boosted bottom-hadron pairs at the LHC. It reconstructs displaced decay vertices, measures the signed tagging tracks, and infers the signal proper time from . The supplied lifetime corresponds to a rest-frame mean flight length , enlarged by the boost.
Even a perfect detector cannot remove physical mistags. An opposite-side neutral bottom meson can oscillate before its semileptonic decay, reversing the lepton charge relative to its production flavour. A cascade produces the charge opposite to a direct decay. Additional bottom pairs or unrelated fragmentation particles can also make the chosen association incorrect. For mistag probability , the measured asymmetry is diluted by ; this is why the tagging calibration is part of a CP measurement.

New to topics? Read the docs here!