Why study B hadrons ? 2 • Heavy quark hadrons are the hydrogen atom of QCD (we can use perturbative QCD to describe the potential quite well) Properties: Focus on masses , lifetimes (decays) Why B Hadron Lifetimes ? • The measurement of lifetimes (and ratios) can be used to evaluate deviations from the naive spectator quark model : b quark decays like free "particle" => all B hadron lifetimes are equal • In reality QCD => lifetimes of B hadrons study the interplay between strong and weak

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... tion • B hadrons probe a unique region of parameter space (i.e., mass, energy, momentum, velocity) that can be studied using a wide range of tools (potential models, HQET, lattice gauge calculations) Why B Hadron masses ? 3 • ppbar collisions at 1.96 TeV • Excellent performance of Tevatron accelerator • Keep breaking record of peak Initial Luminosity after 9 years of running • CDF has already > 7 fb -1 on tape. Rate is 50 pb -1 /week !! • Expect ~10 fb -1 on tape by end 2011 • The analyses presented in this talk span from 1 to 5 fb -1