Visualising quantum oscillations

The image below could (and probably should) be placed into any new book on particle physics. It shows the decay time distribution of B_s (B-sub-s) mesons decaying to two other particles (a Ds meson and a pion). This has two main components, 1. The exponential decay, which you can clearly see 2. A sinusoidal oscillation which modulates the exponential. This sinusoid is a clear sign of the quantum oscillations in the Bs system as matter oscillates to antimatter (Bs <-> Bsbar). It was the product of a huge amount of work from the LHCb collaboration at CERN (that I am a member of), more details of which can be found here. Particle physics is definitely one example of a sector that has Big Data problems and, over the years, come up with many Big Data solutions. More on this in a later post.