Searching for New Mechanisms of Matter/Antimatter Asymmetry

The Department of Physics and Astronomy Colloquium: Prof. Dan Kaplan, Illinois Institute of Technology, to speak on "Searching for New Mechanisms of Matter/Antimatter Asymmetry."

The existence of matter is a great mystery. Simple theories of the Big Bang lead to equal production of matter and antimatter, which would eventually all have annihilated into energy. Apparently a slight excess of matter somehow developed, so that about one in a billion matter particles remained after all the antimatter annihilated. A proposed explanation rests on a subtle difference in properties between matter and antimatter -- "CP violation." Well-known in decays of neutral K and B mesons, this effect seems too weak to account for the observed amount of matter. A novel experiment to search for new forms of CP violation was done in the late 1990s. This "HyperCP" experiment compared many billions of decays of hyperons (unstable relatives of the proton) and their antiparticles. In the process much new knowledge about hyperons has been uncovered. The CP-violation analysis is still in progress and a status report will be given.

Ticket Information
Free

Event Sponsor
Department of Physics and Astronomy, Manoa

More Information
Dr. John G. Learned, 956-2964, jgl@phys.hawaii.edu