Bottom Quark Physics - Past, Present, Future
Abstract
Description
On the occasion of a symposium honoring my collegue Adrian Melissinos, I gave an informal, personal review of bottom quark physics. This paper is a writeup of that talk. I first summarize the early days, the decade from the discovery through the determination of the b quark's rough features. I note a change in objective which occurred around 1990, with the new emphasis being USING the b quark, to probe the Standard Model and to search for physics `beyond the Standard Model'. I review the flavor sector of the Standard Model, showing why the b quark is such a useful probe. I then discuss three topics of current interest: the determination of V_ub; studies of rare hadronic B decays; and the radiative penguin decay b -> s gamma.
Talk given at Symposium on Probing Luminous and Dark Matter, honoring Adrian Melissinos, Rochester, October, 1999. Submitted to conference proceedings, World Scientific, 2000
Talk given at Symposium on Probing Luminous and Dark Matter, honoring Adrian Melissinos, Rochester, October, 1999. Submitted to conference proceedings, World Scientific, 2000