CP Violation in the B System

Abstract

For more than 20 years, the origin of CP violation has been one of the fundamental questions in particle physics. To date, CP violating phenomena have only been seen in the kaon system. First of all, the observation of the decay K L → ππ [1] is evidence that є, the CP-violating mixing parameter, is non-zero. More recently, the measurement of є’/є by the NA31 experiment at CERN [2] indicates that CP is also violated in kaon decays. This latter result, if confirmed, already rules out some models for CP violation, the superweak model for example. It is likely that the B system will provide us with more clues, and perhaps even tell us whether or not the standard model explanation for CP violation, the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa (CKM) matrix, is correct. The results of the ARGUS [3] and CLEO [4] collaborations have indicated that BdBd mixing is significantly larger than expected. This has led to an enormous amount of interest in the implications for the CKM matrix and. as we shall see, has suggested that CP violating asymmetries in the B system could be quite large. In this paper, I will discuss the prospects for CP violation in the B system.