Rare beauty and charm decays at LHCb

Abstract

Rare heavy flavor decays are an ideal place to search for the effects of potential new particles that modify the decay rates or the Lorentz structure of the decay vertices. The LHCb experiment, a dedicated heavy flavour experiment at the LHC at CERN. It has recorded the worlds largest sample of heavy meson and lepton decays. The status of the rare decay analyses with 1\,fb$^{-1}$ of $\sqrt s = 7\,$TeV and 1.1\,fb$^{-1}$ of $\sqrt s = 8\,$TeV of $pp$--collisions collected by the LHCb experiment in 2011 and 2012 is reviewed. The worlds most precise measurements of the angular structure of $B^0\rightarrow K^{*0} μ^+ μ^-$ and $B^+\rightarrow K^{+} μ^+ μ^-$ decays is discussed, as well as the isospin asymmetry measurement in $B\rightarrow K^{(*)} μ^+ μ^-}$ decays. The first evidence for the very rare decay $B^0_s \rightarrow μ^+ μ^-$ is presented together with the most stringent upper exclusion limits on the branching fraction of decays of $B^0$, $D^0$ and $K^0_s$ mesons into two muons. This note finishes with the discussion of searches for lepton number and lepton flavor violating $τ$ decays.