charming-DecaDe · A charming decade: using colliders to probe the charm sector of the Standard Model and Beyond

A charming decade: using colliders to probe the charm sector of the Standard Model and Beyond

The large asymmetry between matter and anti-matter in the visible universe is one of the most intriguing open questions, hinting at new sources of Charge-Parity Violation (CPV). In the context of charm-meson decays, CPV was discovered very recently, by LHCb in 2019, establishing CPV in a new sector after decades of experimental efforts. It is yet unknown whether the Standard Model (SM) of particle physics can explain such a measurement, or whether it signals the emergence of Beyond the SM (BSM) sources of CPV: this difficulty is due to the presence of non-perturbative QCD effects that are extremely challenging to describe, precluding more in depth studies of electroweak dynamics. Another puzzling phenomenon is the structure of flavor, namely, the spectrum of fermion masses and the hierarchy of charged-current couplings in the quark sector. Together with the gauge structure of the SM, these features are intimately connected to the properties of flavor changing neutral-currents. For their study, one must face again non-perturbative QCD effects, which are ubiquitous when dealing with quarks, such as in charm physics. Like in the case of CPV, in order to improve our knowledge about electroweak interactions it is necessary to better understand the underlying strong dynamics. I stress that achieving an accurate description of the SM dynamics at play in charm physics naturally leads to an enhanced sensitivity to BSM physics. The analysis of future data may lead to the indirect observation of BSM, which would certainly be a major breakthrough in particle physics. Moreover, being able to clearly identify hints of BSM via the usage of flavor observables is sought after, since it would help in producing BSM particles directly. The ongoing experiments LHCb and Belle II, and the proposal for extending BESIII, whose total luminosities will be highly increased in the years to come, have a comprehensive experimental program on charm physics. It is thus necessary to dedicate equivalent efforts from the theoretical side to fully exploit foreseen experimental achievements. Furthermore, the quest for precision in particle physics can benefit from new, developing technologies. Indeed, quantum devices will change the way we do research, and unlocking the potential of quantum computers to perform higher order perturbative calculations and beyond is an exciting endeavor.

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