Dr F C Volle

Summary

Felicia joined the School of Physics & Astronomy as a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow.

She obtained her PhD at the University Paris-Saclay in France, where she performed an "Angular analysis of Λb → Λ(1520)μ+μ− decays with the LHCb detector". The underlying decay is a Flavour-Changing-Neutral-Current transition of a b-quark to an s-quark and a muon-antimuon-pair and is highly suppressed in the Standard Model (SM). New Physics (NP) contributions could cause sizable deviations of the SM predictions. Since the measurement of angular observables show deviations with respect to the SM, it is interesting to perform an angular analysis for the first time in this b-baryon decay mode.

Moving from indirect searches of NP to direct searches of NP, Felicia is now searching in Birmingham for Dark Photons using the data collected by the LHCb experiment. Dark Photons are hypothesized particles, which could act as portals between the visible and the dark sector. In the past, LHCb placed stringent limits on coupling strength and the Dark Photon mass by exploring the A’ → μ+μ decay [PRL 124 (2020) 041801]. The aim in the current work is to extend the search to lower Dark Photon masses. This is possible via the decay of a Dark Photon to an electron-positron-pair. A search is conducted in the displaced Dark Photon decay sample using the LHCb data sample collected in 2018. With the recent start of Run 3, the Dark Photon search is aimed to be extended with this new data sample, expected to be advantageous for electronic final states.