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Physical Society Colloquium
What has Beauty to do with it? Prof. David London Université de Montréal Of the four fundamental forces in nature, the weak force is the only one which is not invariant under the discrete symmetries P (parity) and C (charge conjugation). In 1964, it was discovered that the weak interactions also violate CP (the combined operation of C and P). Today, some 25 years later, we still do not know the origin of CP violation. It remains one of the most intriguing problems in physics. To boot,it has important consequences for cosmology. I will describe the experimental evidence for CP violation and present the standard explanation. I will argue that, even though, in experiments to date, CP violation is seen in the decays of the strange quark only, it is the beauty quark that will provide incisive tests of existing models and their extensions. Many of these tests will be performed at new accelerator facilities being commissioned now.
Friday, October 30th 1998, 15:30 |