CP symmetry violation

CP symmetry violation is a property of certain reactions between elementary particles or processes at a nuclear scale, of not giving the same results when each particle in the experiment replaced by its anti-particle and the experiment obtained by reflection in a mirroris considered.

The term C denotes the operation of changing the charge applicable to the equations of a particle system that changes each particle into its anti-particle. The term P is the so-called parity operation that changes a given particle configuration into its mirror image transformation.

Symmetry violation was shown in the 1960s by the Nobel prize winner James Cronin. It occurs in systems with neutral K and B mesons. The mechanism at the origin of this violation is unknown, but there are many possibilities including super-symmetry.

CP symmetry violation is fundamental to explaining the predominance of matter over antimatter in the universe.

Links:
A: Introduction.

B: CP violation and BaBar.

C: CP violation and Belle.