Belle II is based at the SuperKEKB accelerator, which is housed in the KEK in Japan and is the world’s most powerful piece of equipment of its kind. The experiment is geared toward uncovering signs of a new form of physics that are not described by the Standard Model of particle physics. For example, the researchers are searching for the existence of hypothetical dark-matter particles or leptoquarks, which could explain the anomalies in the decays of B mesons that have recently been observed. The physics program also includes a study of exotic hadron states and the precise measurement of processes key to understanding the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon.
As spokesperson, Professor Bernlocher will play a major part in coordinating the collaboration’s scientific and technical activities. “The next few years will be particularly exciting ones for the Belle II experiment,” he says. “The data we’re collecting at the moment and the analyses we’ll be running in the future will propel BELLE into uncharted territory in the hunt for new processes and particles that could change our understanding of the fundamental building blocks of matter.”
A lengthy switch-off between June 2022 and the end of 2023 was used as an opportunity to fit a new pixel detector inside Belle II’s detector. Members of the University of Bonn and the Research and Technology Center for Detector Physics were heavily involved in developing and installing it.
The Belle II experiment will be crucial to the planned Color meets Flavor (CmF) Cluster of Excellence because it is investigating both the weak interaction (“flavor”) and the strong interaction (“color”) in decays of B mesons and charm hadrons. The Cluster aims to identify new fundamental phenomena in physics by studying the interplay between the two interactions. With their world-leading expertise in the physics of the strong and weak interactions, the University of Bonn, TU Dortmund University, the University of Siegen and Forschungszentrum Jülich are the perfect team to bring this field of study further forward. And Belle II is a vital experiment that is bridging the gap between various different investigation methods and energy scales.
