A Challenge to Lepton Universality in B Meson Decays

One of the key assumptions of the Standard Model of fundamental particles is that the interactions of the charged leptons, namely electrons, muons, and taus, differ only because of their different masses. While precision tests comparing processes involving electrons and muons have not revealed any significant violation of this assumption, recent studies involving the higher-mass tau lepton have resulted in observations that challenge lepton universality at the level of four standard deviations. A confirmation of these results would point to new particles or interactions, and could have profound implications for our understanding of particle physics.