New particle discovered at CERN in Geneva, sheds light on matter

A new particle discovered at CERN in Geneva will shed light on matter and the fundamental forces that govern it. It is a relative of the proton, similar in structure but heavier: what 'betrayed' its presence was its decay into three lighter particles, recorded thanks to the LHCb experiment, one of the main experiments in operation at the Large Hadron Collider and currently coordinated by Italia with the National Institute of Nuclear Physics. This is the first particle discovered using the upgraded version of LHCb, which has increased its sensitivity and speed of data acquisition.

'The update allows us to collect 15 times more data every day than before,' Giovanni Punzi, an Infn researcher and professor at the University of Pisa, who is the national LHCb researcher, tells ANSA. 'We now see these particles much more clearly and this generates a lot of enthusiasm. Now we are already looking for other members of the family of this new particle,' Punzi continues, 'we still expect interesting developments in this field. Particles such as the one just discovered are made up of the fundamental constituents of matter called quarks, of which there are six different types. While the proton consists of two so-called up quarks and one down quark, the new particle replaces the two up quarks with two charm quarks. 'The structure is similar to that of the proton,' says Punzi, 'but much heavier and more exotic, because charm quarks are not found in ordinary matter and it is difficult to produce them even with powerful accelerators like Lhc.

The observations are in line with the predictions of the Standard Model, the reference theory of modern physics that describes the fundamental particles and forces of matter, and the result confirms the great capacity of the international LHCb collaboration, where the percentage of Italian researchers involved (19%) exceeds that of all other countries. "These are very particular states of matter whose behaviour is difficult to predict, and therefore observing them is by no means taken for granted," Punzi comments. "These discoveries are not just a curiosity, they allow us to better understand the behaviour of quarks and the forces that bind them," continues the Infn researcher, "and they show that the approach we are taking with LHCb is the right one, encouraging us to continue along the same path.

For this reason, researchers are already planning a further improvement, which will enable the experiment to collect and analyse data even faster in the last phase of the Lhc's life. The detector will, in fact, be upgraded to also provide extremely precise temporal measurements of the particle passage. Work will begin in the summer of 2026, coinciding with a long four-year shutdown period that will enable the Lhc to be transformed into the High-Luminosity Lhc: the project will increase the number of particle collisions by a factor of 10, ushering in a new era for high-energy physics.