New exotic matter particle, a tetraquark, discovered
New exotic matter particle, a tetraquark, discovered
Today, the LHCb experiment at CERN is presenting a new discovery at the European Physical Society Conference on High Energy Physics (EPS-HEP). The new particle discovered by LHCb, labeled as Tcc+, is a tetraquark—an exotic hadron containing two quarks and two antiquarks. It is the longest-lived exotic matter particle ever discovered, and the first to contain two heavy quarks and two light antiquarks.
The newly identified particle is made up of four quarks of the same flavour and is likely, scientists say, to be the first of a previously undiscovered class of particles.
Quarks are elementary particles that are one of the fundamental building blocks of matter.
« Particles made up of four quarks are already exotic, and the one we have just discovered is the first to be made up of four heavy quarks of the same type, specifically two charm quarks and two charm antiquarks, » said physicist and outgoing LHCb spokesperson Giovanni Passaleva of the National Institute for Nuclear Physics in Italy.
« Up until now, the LHCb and other experiments had only observed tetraquarks with two heavy quarks at most