Color Meets Flavor

Quark flavor physics studies the transitions of quarks via the weak interaction. Since quarks carry a color charge they do not exist as free particles, but are bound into colorless hadrons. Thus for a clear identification of the fundamental quark transitions a control of the hadronic effects is indispensable - color meets flavor.

From a physics point of view quark flavor physics gives access to the fundamental parameters of the standard model (SM) like quark masses or the parameters of the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa-matrix (CKM-matrix). The latter object encodes the experimentally observed violation of the CP symmetry, which is a necessary ingredient for the creation of a matter-antimatter asymmetry in the early Universe.

Despite its enormous success the SM of particle physics leaves several fundamental questions unanswered. In most models of baryogenesis the amount of CP violation within the CKM matrix is not sufficient to explain the observed amount of matter in the Universe. Moreover the SM does not contain a candidate for dark matter. Hence searches for extensions of the SM are a big motivation for current research activities in particle physics.

Over the last decade there has been tremendous experimental progress in flavor physics, in particular by the LHCb Collaboration at CERN, the Belle II Collaboration at KEK and the BESIII Collaboration in Beijing, as well as many more experiments. This advance is paralleled by the huge theoretical progress in our understanding of perturbative and non-perturbative aspects of quantum chromodynamics (QCD), the theory of the strong interaction. Therefore quark flavor physics is an ideal ground for searches of effects beyond the SM (BSM) via the comparison of precision measurements with precision SM calculations.

Review lectures will provide a broad overview over current highlights of the field, accompanied by hands-on sessions on detector development and deep learning based data analysis as well as inspiring evening lectures.

Further information