LHC Run 2 started today. LHCb physicists have been eagerly awaiting this moment since 14 February 2013 when the last Run 1 collisions took place. The LHC has reached the “Stable Beams” state for the first time for two years. In these conditions the experiments could switch on safely their sensitive sub-detectors. This allowed LHCb physicists to activate the tracking detectors as well as the Vertex Locator VELO and to observe particle tracks for the first time. The right image shows a typical event fully reconstructed during data taking. Particles identified as pions, kaon, etc. are shown in different colours. The left image shows LHCb physicists in the control room.
LHCb has published many results based on data collected during the first three-year Run 1. But this was only the beginning. Collisions at 13 TeV will double the production rates of beauty hadrons enabling LHCb to obtain even more precise, interesting and, hopefully, surprising results.
Follow LHCb data taking by watching live event display as well as live LHC and LHCb status pages.
Read more in the CERN Press Release.