LHCb status and early physics prospects

TL;DR

LHCb is a specialized detector at the LHC designed for b and c quark physics, with initial results from commissioning and promising prospects for early physics measurements that could reveal New Physics phenomena.

Contribution

This paper reviews LHCb's detector design, performance, and early commissioning results, highlighting its readiness for initial data collection and potential for groundbreaking physics discoveries.

Findings

Successful commissioning of detector subsystems using cosmic and beam data

Expected collection of ~0.3fb-1 in first year enabling significant measurements

Potential to observe New Physics effects like B_s mixing phase and rare decays

Abstract

LHCb is a dedicated detector for b and c physics at the LHC. I will present a concise review of the detector design and expected performance together with some first results on the commissioning of the different sub-systems based on cosmic data and particle beams delivered by the LHC during the summer of 2008. The experiment is ready to exploit first data expected from the LHC. An integrated luminosity of ~0.3fb-1, which should be collected during the first year of physics running, will already allow LHCb to perform a number of very significant mesurements with the potential of revealing New Physics effects, such as the measurement of the B_s mixing phase phi_{\Jpsi\phi}, or the search for the decay B_s->mumu beyond the limit set by CDF and D0.