As part of the Belle experiment, researchers were able to measure the energy dependence of e+e- -> B-anti-B, B-anti-B* and B*-anti-B* reactions in the 10.63 GeV to 11.02 GeV energy range for the first time. The new data will help clarify the nature of the group of exotic Upsilon mesons that have mass in this range. The results of the study were published in the Journal of High Energy Physics.
A team of Russian researchers from HSE University, the Russian Space Research Institute, and the Pushkov Institute of Terrestrial Magnetism (Russian Academy of Sciences) has described the development of modulational instability of electromagnetic waves in dusty ionospheric plasma, which is caused by a high intensity of electromagnetic emissions. The researchers considered inelastic collisions of ionospheric plasma particles and formulated new tasks and applications to be addressed at a later stage. The results are published in the Physics of Plasmas journal.
Researchers from the Institute of Earthquake Prediction Theory and Mathematical Geophysics (Russian Academy of Science) and HSE University have proven that asymmetry between meridional flows in the northern and southern hemispheres of the Sun depends on the anomalies of the solar magnetic field. Research undertaken by Elena Blanter and Mikhail Snirman reveals new aspects of the importance of solar magnetic field asymmetry for predicting the anomalies of the Sun’s activity. The article has been published in Solar Physics.
LHCb (Large Hadron Collider beauty) collaboration, one of the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) experiments, reported that their detector has identified particles that have not previously been detected in physics experimentally – excited omega baryons (Ω-b). Just several years ago, detecting such particles in LHC was believed to be next to impossible. Among proton particles, the excited ‘charmed omegas’ were preselected by an algorithm created by staff from the HSE Laboratory of Methods for Big Data Analysis and Yandex LLC. IQ.HSE talked to Denis Derkach and Fedor Ratnikov about their collaboration’s ‘fresh catch’ and about the point of ‘fishing’ on LHCb in general.
Alexey Starobinsky, a professor of physics at HSE University and a fellow at the Landau Institute for Theoretical Physics at the Russian Academy of Science, has been awarded the Dirac Medal of the ICTP, a prestigious prize awarded annually by the Abdus Salam International Center for Theoretical Physics. HSE News Service spoke with the laureate about his path to international recognition, his students, and the award.
The HSE University competition committee has announced the winners of an international competition for new physics laboratory proposals. Two proposed projects were selected: the Laboratory of van der Waals Heterostructures, headed by Davit Ghazaryan, and the Laboratory of Nanophotonics and Functional Materials, headed by Andrey Krasavin.
A team of researchers from Germany and Russia have demonstrated that long contraction of muscles in one hand increases involuntary reaction of the other one. Meanwhile, the time between muscle contractions in both hands decreases. The results of the study have been published in the paper ‘Inverse relationshipbetween amplitude and latency of physiological mirror activity during repetitive isometric contractions’ in Neuroscience.
The results of recent study conducted by the NASA Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, the agency’s automatic interplanetary station, show the existence of a ‘permafrost’ near the poles of the Moon with a relatively high content of water ice (up to 5% by weight). It is believed that water ice could supply a life support system for the future Russian Lunar Station and that it could also produce hydrogen-oxygen fuel for flights into deep space.
At the general meeting of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS), held on April 23, research by Alexander Kostinskiy, Vladimir Rakov and Mikhail Andreev conducted in collaboration with their colleagues from academic institutes on the modeling and development of lightning was acknowledged as one of the most significant Russian scientific achievement in 2018.
Researchers from HSE University and Yandex, as part of the LHCb collaboration at CERN, have been the first to discover CP violation in charm meson decays.
