Service d'astrophysique
Laboratoire AIM

History and main milestones

November 1993: start of the collaboration. 

May 1999: beginning of data taking.

Summer 2001: first observation of CP violation in the B meson system.

Summer 2004: first observation of direct CP violation in the B meson system. 

Summer 2005: the accelerator is operating at more than three times the nominal instantaneous luminosity.

September 2008: scheduled end of data taking.

Main achievements

• First observation of CP violation in the B meson system in 2001. 
• Discovery of nes Ds mesons in 2003. 
• First constraints on the alpha and gamma angles of the unitarity triangle in 2003.
• First observation of direct CP violation in the B meson system in 2004.
• First observation of D0 mixing in 2006.

Status of the experiment

Run 6 of BABAR ended in September 2007. The total integrated luminosity is 477 fb-1.

The constraints on the parameters of CP violation (the unitaruty triangle) have significantly improved our knowledge of this field. They are in good agreement with the predictions from the Standard Model. 

The BABAR collaboration has published about 300 physics papers in scientific journals and given many presentations at international conferences.

The very good performances and stability of the DIRC detector should also be noted.

Perspectives

The BABAR experiment will keep on taking data until September 30, 2008 et the analysis of all these data will continue  intensively until 2010 and then less intensively in the following years. It will give a better precision on the measurement of the alpha, beta, and gamma angles of the unitarity triangle and may reveal deviations with respect to predictions from the Standard Model. 

Then the B meson physics will be studied by the LHCb experiment, and afterwards by an hypothetic "super B factory".