Physics Colloquium, Tuesday, February 12, 2002

Observation of CP Violation in the Decay of B Mesons

Daniel Marlow

Princeton University

Indirect CP violation has recently been observed in the time evolution of the decays of neutral B meson pairs. The amount of CP violation is characterized in terms of the Standard Model parameter sin (2 phi _1), which was measured by the Belle collaboration to be sin (2 phi _1) = 0.99 ± 0.14 stat ± 0.06 sys. The BaBar collaboration has reported a value of sin (2 phi _1) = 0.59 ± 0.14 stat ± 0.05 sys. These measurements are the first unambiguous observations of CP violation outside of the neutral kaon system. In this talk I present an overview of Standard Model CP violation along with a description of the detection and data analysis techniques that go into these results.

3.30 p.m., Smith Laboratory, Room 1005

Refreshments served in Smith 1094 at 3:00 p.m.