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The goal of the LHCspin project is to develop innovative solutions for measuring the 3D structure of nucleons in high-energy polarized fixed-target collisions at LHC, exploring new processes and exploiting new probes in a unique, previously unexplored, kinematic regime. A precise multi-dimensional description of the hadron structure has, in fact, the potential to deepen our understanding of the strong interactions and to provide a much more precise framework for measuring both Standard Model and Beyond Standard Model observables. This ambitious task poses its basis on the recent experience with the successful installation and operation of the SMOG2 unpolarized gas target in front of the LHCb spectrometer. Besides allowing for interest- ing physics studies ranging from astrophysics to heavy-ion physics, SMOG2 provides an ideal benchmark for studying beam-target dynamics at the LHC and demonstrates the feasibility of simultaneous operation with beam-beam collisions. With the installation of the proposed polarized target system, LHCb will become the first experiment to simultaneously collect data from unpolarized beam-beam collisions at √s=14 TeV and polarized and unpolar- ized beam-target collisions at √sNN ∼100 GeV. LHCspin has the potential to open new frontiers in physics by exploiting the capabilities of the world’s most powerful collider and one of the most advanced spectrometers. This document also highlights the need to perform an R&D campaign and the commissioning of the apparatus at the LHC Interaction Region 4 during the Run 4, before its final installation in LHCb. This opportunity could also allow to undertake preliminary physics measurements with unprecedented conditions. 

We report measurements of production cross sections for ${\rho }^{+}$ , ${\rho }^0$ , $\omega$ , $K^{*+}$ , $K^{*0}$ , $\varphi$ , $\eta$ , $K_S^0$ , $f_0\left(980\right)$ , $D^{+}$ , $D^0$ , $D_s^{+}$ , $D^{*+}$ , $D^{*0}$ , and $D_s^{*+}$ in $e^{+}{e}^{-}$ collisions at a center-of-mass energy near 10.58 GeV. The data were recorded by the Belle experiment, consisting of $571{\mathrm{fb}}^{-1}$ at 10.58 GeV and $74{\mathrm{fb}}^{-1}$ at 10.52 GeV. Production cross sections are extracted as a function of the fractional hadron momentum $x_p$ . The measurements are compared to Monte Carlo generator predictions with various fragmentation settings, including those that have increased fragmentation into vector mesons over pseudoscalar mesons. The cross sections measured for light hadrons are consistent with no additional increase of vector over pseudoscalar mesons. The charmed-meson cross sections are compared to earlier measurements—when available—including older Belle results, which they supersede. They are in agreement before application of an improved initial-state radiation correction procedure that causes slight changes in their $x_p$ shapes. Published by the American Physical Society2025 

In the bottomonium sector, the hindered magnetic dipole transitions between P-wave states $h_b\left(2P\right)\to {\chi }_{bJ}\left(1P\right)\gamma$ , $J=0$ , 1, 2, are expected to be severely suppressed according to the relativized quark model, due to the spin flip of the $b$ quark. Nevertheless, a recent model following the coupled-channel approach predicts the corresponding branching fractions to be enhanced by orders of magnitude. In this Letter, we report the first search for such transitions. We find no significant signals and set upper limits at 90% confidence level on the corresponding branching fractions: $\mathcal{B}\left[h_b\right(2P)\to \gamma {\chi }_{b0}(1P\left)\right]<2.7\times {10}^{-1}$ , $\mathcal{B}\left[h_b\right(2P)\to \gamma {\chi }_{b1}(1P\left)\right]<5.4\times {10}^{-3}$ and $\mathcal{B}\left[h_b\right(2P)\to \gamma {\chi }_{b2}(1P\left)\right]<1.3\times {10}^{-2}$ . These values help to constrain the parameters of the coupled-channel models. The results are obtained using a $121.4{\mathrm{fb}}^{-1}$ data sample taken around $\sqrt{s}=10.860\mathrm{GeV}$ with the Belle detector at the KEKB asymmetric-energy $e^{+}{e}^{-}$ collider. Published by the American Physical Society2025 

A<sc>bstract</sc> We report a search for the lepton-flavor-violating decaysτ^±→ℓ^±α(ℓ=e,μ), whereαis an undetected spin-0 particle, such as an axion-like particle using 736 × 10⁶tau lepton pairs collected by the Belle detector at the KEKB asymmetric-energye⁺e⁻collider. We find no evidence of signal and obtain the most stringent upper limits on the branching fractions at 95% confidence level:$$\mathcal{B}$$(τ^±→ e^±α) < (0.4–6.4)×10⁻⁴and$$\mathcal{B}$$(τ^±→ μ^±α) < (0.2–3.5)×10⁻⁴at 95% confidence level for anαmass in the range 0.0≤ m_α≤1.6 GeV/c². 

We report the first evidence for the $h_b\left(2\mathrm{P}\right)\to \mathrm{\Upsilon }\left(1\mathrm{S}\right)\eta$ transition with a significance of 3.5 standard deviations. The decay branching fraction is measured to be $\mathcal{B}\left[h_b\right(2\mathrm{P})\to \mathrm{\Upsilon }(1\mathrm{S}\left)\eta \right]=({7.1}_{-3.2}^{+3.7}\pm 0.8)\times {10}^{-3}$ , which is noticeably smaller than expected. We also set upper limits on ${\pi }^0$ transitions of $\mathcal{B}\left[h_b\right(2\mathrm{P})\to \mathrm{\Upsilon }(1\mathrm{S}\left){\pi }^0\right]<1.8\times {10}^{-3}$ , and $\mathcal{B}\left[h_b\right(1\mathrm{P})\to \mathrm{\Upsilon }(1\mathrm{S}\left){\pi }^0\right]<1.8\times {10}^{-3}$ , at the 90% confidence level. These results are obtained with a $131.4{\mathrm{fb}}^{-1}$ data sample collected near the $\mathrm{\Upsilon }\left(5\mathrm{S}\right)$ resonance with the Belle detector at the KEKB asymmetric-energy $e^{+}{e}^{-}$ collider. Published by the American Physical Society2024 

A<sc>bstract</sc> Using the data samples of 102 million Υ(1S) and 158 million Υ(2S) events collected by the Belle detector, we search for a pentaquark state in thepJ/ψfinal state from Υ(1,2S) inclusive decays. Here, the charge-conjugate$$\overline{p }J/\psi $$is included. We observe clearpJ/ψproduction in Υ(1,2S) decays and measure the branching fractions to be$$\mathcal{B}[\Upsilon (1S)\to pJ/\psi +anything]=[8.1\pm 0.6(stat.)\pm 0.5(syst.)]\times {10}^{-5}$$and$$\mathcal{B}[\Upsilon (2S)\to pJ/\psi +anything]=[4.3\pm 0.5(stat.)\pm 0.4(syst.)]\times {10}^{-5}$$. We also measure the cross section of inclusivepJ/ψproduction ine⁺e⁻annihilation to beσ(e⁺e⁻→pJ/ψ+anything) = [108 ± 11(stat.) ± 6(syst.)] fb at$$\sqrt{s}=10.52$$GeV using an 89.5 fb⁻¹continuum data sample. There is no significantP_c(4312)⁺,P_c(4440)⁺orP_c(4457)⁺signal found in thepJ/ψfinal states in Υ(1,2S) inclusive decays. We determine the upper limits of$$\mathcal{B}\left[\Upsilon \left({1},{2}S\right)\to {P}_{c}^{+}+anything\right]\cdot \mathcal{B}\left({P}_{c}^{+}\to pJ/\psi \right)$$to be at the 10⁻⁶level. 

We present an analysis of the processes $e^{+}{e}^{-}\to \eta \mathrm{\Upsilon }\left(1S\right)$ , $\eta \mathrm{\Upsilon }\left(2S\right)$ , and $\gamma X_b$ with $X_b\to {\pi }^{+}{\pi }^{-}{\chi }_{bJ},{\chi }_{bJ}\to \gamma \mathrm{\Upsilon }\left(1S\right)$ ( $J=1$ , 2) reconstructed from $\gamma \gamma {\pi }^{+}{\pi }^{-}{\ell }^{+}{\ell }^{-}$ $(\ell =e,\mu )$ final states in $19.6{\mathrm{fb}}^{-1}$ of Belle II data collected at four energy points near the peak of the $\mathrm{\Upsilon }\left(10753\right)$ resonance. Here, $X_b$ is a hypothetical bottomonium-sector partner of the $X\left(3872\right)$ . In the process $e^{+}{e}^{-}\to \eta \mathrm{\Upsilon }\left(2S\right)$ , we observe a signal with a significance that exceeds $6.0\sigma$ when all energy points are combined. A signal with a significance of $4.2\sigma$ is observed at a center-of-mass energy of 10.653 GeV, close to the $B^{*}{\overline{B}}^{*}$ threshold. At this energy, we measure $\sigma \left(\eta \mathrm{\Upsilon }\right(2S\left)\right)/\sigma \left({\pi }^{+}{\pi }^{-}\mathrm{\Upsilon }\right(2S\left)\right)>23$ at the 90% confidence level, indicating a strong violation of heavy-quark spin symmetry. No significant signal is observed for $e^{+}{e}^{-}\to \eta \mathrm{\Upsilon }\left(1S\right)$ or $\gamma X_b$ . Upper limits on the Born cross sections for the processes $e^{+}{e}^{-}\to \eta \mathrm{\Upsilon }\left(1S\right)$ and $e^{+}{e}^{-}\to \gamma X_b$ with $X_b\to {\pi }^{+}{\pi }^{-}{\chi }_{bJ}$ are determined. 

We report the results of the first search for Standard Model and baryon-number-violating two-body decays of the neutral $B$ mesons to ${\mathrm{\Lambda }}^0$ and ${\mathrm{\Omega }}_c^{(*)0}$ using $711{\mathrm{fb}}^{-1}$ of data collected at the $\mathrm{\Upsilon }\left(4S\right)$ resonance with the Belle detector at the KEKB asymmetric-energy $e^{+}{e}^{-}$ collider. We observe no evidence of signal from any such decays and set 95% confidence-level upper limits on the products of $B^0$ and ${\overline{B}}^0$ branching fractions for these two-body decays with $\mathcal{B}({\mathrm{\Omega }}_c^0\to {\pi }^{+}{\mathrm{\Omega }}^{-})$ in the range between $9.5\times {10}^{-8}$ and $31.2\times {10}^{-8}$ . Published by the American Physical Society2024 

We measure the complete set of angular coefficients $J_i$ for exclusive $\overline{B}\to D^{*}\ell {\overline{\nu }}_{\ell }$ decays ( $\ell =e$ , $\mu$ ). Our analysis uses the full $711{\mathrm{fb}}^{-1}$ Belle dataset with hadronic tag-side reconstruction. The results allow us to extract the form factors describing the $\overline{B}\to D^{*}$ transition and the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa matrix element $\left|V_{\mathrm{cb}}\right|$ . Using recent lattice QCD calculations for the hadronic form factors, we find $\left|V_{\mathrm{cb}}\right|=(40.7\pm 0.7)\times {10}^{-3}$ using the Boyd-Grinstein-Lebed parametrization, compatible with determinations from inclusive semileptonic decays. We search for lepton flavor universality violation as a function of the hadronic recoil parameter $w$ and investigate the differences of the electron and muon angular distributions. We find no deviation from standard model expectations. Published by the American Physical Society2024 

We report the results of the first search for $B^{-}$ decays to the ${\overline{\mathrm{\Xi }}}_c^0{\overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }}}_c^{-}$ final state using $711{\mathrm{fb}}^{-1}$ of data collected at the $\mathrm{\Upsilon }\left(4S\right)$ resonance with the Belle detector at the KEKB asymmetric-energy $e^{+}{e}^{-}$ collider. The results are interpreted in terms of both direct baryon-number-violating $B^{-}$ decay and ${\mathrm{\Xi }}_c^0-{\overline{\mathrm{\Xi }}}_c^0$ oscillations which follow the standard model decay $B^{-}\to {\mathrm{\Xi }}_c^0{\overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }}}_c^{-}$ . We observe no evidence for baryon number violation and set the 95% confidence-level upper limits on the ratio of baryon-number-violating and standard model branching fractions $\mathcal{B}(B^{-}\to {\overline{\mathrm{\Xi }}}_c^0{\overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }}}_c^{-})/\mathcal{B}(B^{-}\to {\mathrm{\Xi }}_c^0{\overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }}}_c^{-})$ to be $<2.7\%$ and on the effective angular frequency of mixing $\omega$ in ${\mathrm{\Xi }}_c^0-{\overline{\mathrm{\Xi }}}_c^0$ oscillations to be $<0.76{\mathrm{ps}}^{-1}$ (equivalent to ${\tau }_{\mathrm{mix}}>1.3\mathrm{ps}$ ). Published by the American Physical Society2024