Searches for two-body charmless baryonic B0 decays at LHCb

The results of two separate searches for the rare two-body charmless baryonic decays B0 -> p pbar and B0s -> p pbar at the LHCb experiment are reported in this thesis. The first analysis uses a data sample, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 0.9 fb^-1, of proton-proton collision data collected by the LHCb experiment at a centre-of-mass energy of 7 TeV. An excess of B0 -> p pbar candidates with respect to background expectations is seen with a statistical significance of 3.3 standard deviations. This constitutes the first evidence for a two-body charmless baryonic B0 decay. No significant B0s -> p pbar signal was observed. However, a small excess of B0s -> p pbar events allowed the extraction of two sided confidence level intervals for the B0s -> p pbar branching fraction using the Feldman-Cousins frequentist method. This improved the upper limit on the B0s -> p pbar branching fraction by three orders of magnitude over previous bounds. The 68.3% confidence level intervals on the branching fractions were measured to be BF(B0 -> p pbar) = ( 1.47 ^{+0.62}_{-0.51} ^{+0.35}_{-0.14} ) x 10^-8, BF(B0s -> p pbar) = ( 2.84 ^{+2.03}_{-1.68} ^{+0.85}_{-0.18} ) x 10^-8, where the first uncertainty is statistical and the second is systematic. The second analysis followed on from the first LHCb result and included the full 2011 and 2012 samples of proton-proton collision data at centre of mass energies of 7 and 8 TeV, corresponding to a total integrated luminosity of 3.122 fb^-1.

Which-path problem for one and two particles with two degrees of freedom and a relation between transverse spatial structure and group velocity of light

Quantum mechanics, optics and indeed any wave theory exhibits the phenomenon of interference. In this thesis we present two problems investigating interference due to indistinguishable alternatives and a mostly unrelated investigation into the free space propagation speed of light pulses in particular spatial modes. In chapter 1 we introduce the basic properties of the electromagnetic field needed for the subsequent chapters. In chapter 2 we review the properties of interference using the beam splitter and the Mach-Zehnder interferometer. In particular we review what happens when one of the paths of the interferometer is marked in some way so that the particle having traversed it contains information as to which path it went down (to be followed up in chapter 3) and we review Hong-Ou-Mandel interference at a beam splitter (to be followed up in chapter 5). In chapter 3 we present the first of the interference problems. This consists of a nested Mach-Zehnder interferometer in which each of the free space propagation segments are weakly marked by mirrors vibrating at different frequencies [1]. The original experiment drew the conclusions that the photons followed disconnected paths. We partition the description of the light in the interferometer according to the number of paths it contains which-way information about and reinterpret the results reported in [1] in terms of the interference of paths spatially connected from source to detector. In chapter 4 we briefly review optical angular momentum, entanglement and spontaneous parametric down conversion. These concepts feed into chapter 5 in which we present the second of the interference problems namely Hong-Ou-Mandel interference with particles possessing two degrees of freedom. We analyse the problem in terms of exchange symmetry for both boson and fermion pairs and show that the particle statistics at a beam splitter can be controlled for suitably chosen states. We propose an experimental test of these ideas using orbital angular momentum entangled photons. In chapter 6 we look at the effect that the transverse spatial structure of the mode that a pulse of light is excited in has on its group velocity. We show that the resulting group velocity is slower than the speed of light in vacuum for plane waves and that this reduction in the group velocity is related to the spread in the wave vectors required to create the transverse spatial structure. We present experimental results of the measurement of this slowing down using Hong-Ou-Mandel interference.