The Standard Model of particle physics is like a jigsaw into which physicists are gradually fitting pieces. Though most results fit well and are compatible with Standard Model predictions, there are physicists hoping for results that don't fit the jigsaw and so could point to new physics.

Jonas Rademacker of the University of Bristol and the Large Hadron Collider beauty (LHCb) collaboration is one of those physicists. “We’re hoping to find the jigsaw piece that looks like it should fit, but when you look very closely, the pattern isn’t quite right,” he says.

Rademacker has developed a new way of analysing data from LHCb that offers an unprecedented level of detail and precision. His technique requires analyzing special scatter plots called Dalitz plots in five dimensions rather than two. These plots represent the strange quantum-mechanical interference effects that happen in particle decays, and Rademacker and his colleagues use them at LHCb as a precision tool to measure CP violation.

Though five-dimensional analysis is a complicated feat, it is worth the effort because it significantly increases the precision of LHCb measurements.

Read more:  "LHCb's extra dimension" [PDF]