"One way of thinking about the confinement problem was suggested by e+ e- annihilation into hadrons. Initially, the virtual photon dissociates into a quark and an antiquark that move with almost the speed of light back-to-back. Feynman had argued that additional pairs would be produced in the region between them, along the line separating the initially produced . The new pairs and original would rearrange and become a bunch of outgoing mesons [...].

"The threat is much stronger than its execution"

Aaron Nimzovich (complaining to the arbiter of a chess match that his opponent had put a cigar in his mouth, after the arbiter had pointed out that the cigar was unlit).

As if taken by a spell, my joking claim to be on strike in the last post grew to become one of the longest streaks of absence from blogging of the last few months, for a series of irrelevant reasons tightly packed together.

In the meantime I have tried to put together an article on a recent very interesting measurement performed by the CDF collaboration: a study of very rare decays of B mesons, which can now not only determine the rate of said decays, but also have a taste at subtle kinematical effects in the distribution of the final states. The distributions are a new key to discriminate the existence of new physics in these rare processes.

Shoot. Today I am on strike.

This morning I decided to post here an article describing the details of a new result just approved by the CMS collaboration, the observation of a nice signal of phi meson decays. It is a result of which I am quite proud, and although not really a big deal, it is a nice way to start the new year, while we wait for more data from the LHC.

I had just finished writing the 200-lines piece describing the likelihood fit to the mass distribution, when I decided to save the draft with the "publish" box unmarked, to give it a last reading before submitting it. And the crazy web interface logged me off the site instead!