2026/03/17 by ATLAS Collaboration, G. Aad, Erlend Aakvaag +97
Physics and Astronomy · #High-Energy Particle Collisions Research #Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies #Quantum Chromodynamics and Particle Interactions
paper · pdf · doi:10.1007/jhep07(2026)078
A bstract The first measurement of the magnitude of the CKM quark mixing matrix element | V cb | using on-shell W -boson decays is presented. The measurement is made with tt <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mi>t</mml:mi> <mml:mover> <mml:mi>t</mml:mi> <mml:mo>¯</mml:mo> </mml:mover> </mml:math> events from pp collision data corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 140 fb − 1 at a centre-of-mass energy of 13 TeV collected by the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider. A value of: |Vcb|=(50-14+11)× 10-3 <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mfenced> <mml:msub> <mml:mi>V</mml:mi> <mml:mi>cb</mml:mi> </mml:msub> </mml:mfenced> <mml:mo>=</mml:mo> <mml:mfenced> <mml:msubsup> <mml:mn>50</mml:mn> <mml:mrow> <mml:mo>−</mml:mo> <mml:mn>14</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> <mml:mrow> <mml:mo>+</mml:mo> <mml:mn>11</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> </mml:msubsup> </mml:mfenced> <mml:mo>×</mml:mo> <mml:msup> <mml:mn>10</mml:mn> <mml:mrow> <mml:mo>−</mml:mo> <mml:mn>3</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> </mml:msup> </mml:math> is measured, where the uncertainties have roughly equal contributions from the limited size of the data sample and from systematic effects. This is consistent with existing measurements made at much lower energy scales in B hadron decays. While the sensitivity does not yet rival that of previous determinations, this novel approach probes a very different physical situation, namely the rare hadronic t→ bbc <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mi>t</mml:mi> <mml:mo>→</mml:mo> <mml:mi>b</mml:mi> <mml:mover> <mml:mi>b</mml:mi> <mml:mo>¯</mml:mo> </mml:mover> <mml:mi>c</mml:mi> </mml:math> decay at high momentum-transfer, rather than semileptonic B decays at low momentum-transfer.