Josephine Swann

Abstract:

Baryon number violation is one process that could give rise to the matter-antimatter asymmetry in the universe. Baryon number is a conserved quantity, meaning that the number of baryons in the initial state of an interaction should be the same as the number of baryons in the final state. Experimentally, it is very hard to prove, though the Standard Model and other theories predict Baryon number violating processes. One such process is in the B meson system, which was investigated by the BaBar Experiment at the Stanford Linear Accelerator. SLAC is no longer operational, but its data is available for analysis. Using new analysis tools, we search for Baryon Number Violating decays of the B meson to the neutral Lambda and a proton, which yields a Baryon number violation of 2.