PhD13 - Lepton flavour in b to s transitions: prospects at the LHC and beyond (LFB2S)

We invite applications for a PhD position on the LHCb experiment at the CERN Large Hadron Collider. The successful candidate will be based at CPPM, Marseille, France under the supervision of Giampiero Mancinelli and Justine Serrano, with frequent travel to CERN and tight collaboration with Aoife Bharucha at CPT, Marseille.

The project contains an experimental component which will focus on rare decays of B(s) mesons to tau leptons, and a phenomenological component dedicated to the sensitivity of these channels to new physics.

B decays involving b to s quark transitions provide some of the strongest contraints on physics beyond the Standard Model. Indeed, as these transitions are highly suppressed in the Standard Model, the effects of new physics particles could show up clearly. Interestingly, a number of anomalies of varying significance have showed up in the first LHCb data for these mode, for example in the ratio RK=BR(B→Kµμ)/BR(B→Kee), or the angular observables of the B→K*µμ decay. These measurements suggest the presence of new physics particles, in particular RK indicates a hierarchy in the coupling to the different lepton generations, such that the coupling to the tau leptons should be strongly affected. It is thus crucial to improve our knowledge about meson decays into tau leptons, which is currently very limited. The goal of this PhD is to participate in this effort towards understanding B meson decays into tau leptons, both on the theory side with study of the possible effects of new physics in these modes, and their interplay with other electroweak-scale searches, and on the experimental side, with the search for the very rare Bs→ττ decay at LHCb and sensitivity studies for the future circular collider (FCC) for Bs→ττ and the lepton flavor violation mode Bs→τμ.

The PhD student will thus play a central role in the  existing collaboration between the CPT flavour group and the CPPM LHCb group, and will also participate in the LHCb Run 2 data taking.

LHCb:
http://lhcb-public.web.cern.ch/lhcb-public/

The position is funded by the OCEVU Labex with no nationality restriction.
Knowledge of French is not necessary.

More information as well as instructions for application can be found on page: 
https://www.labex-ocevu.univ-amu.fr/?q=en/node/141

The deadline for application to this position is 31 MARCH 2016.