BEAUTY QUARKS

Beauty quarks, also sometimes referred to as bottom quarks, were first theorized in 1973 by physicists Makoto Kobayashi and Toshihide Maskawa. They were initially proposed in order to explain violations of the Standard Model. Collisions with beauty quarks as a byproduct give a distinct signature that makes them easy to identify. One top of this, mesons that contain beauty quarks live very long for their mass making them one of the easiest particles to use for research. The beauty quark is particularly sensitive to new quantum fields because of its intense interaction with the Higgs field. These fields that a particle interacts with can alter how long a particle lives before it decays, what sort of particle it decays into, and in what ratio. Because of how long it lives and its strong interaction with the Higgs field, beauty quarks are uniquely suited for research into Standard Model violations.

The asymmetry between matter and anti-matter is one of the Standard Model violations that beauty quarks are used to research. According to the Standard Model, beauty quarks would have been in abundance right after the big bang. By comparing the decay of beauty quarks and anti-beauty quarks, physicists can gain a better understanding on why nature prefers matter instead of ant-matter.