Mirror Matter—Experimental Search for Neutron to Mirror Neutron Oscillations

Abstract

The idea of a mirror world consisting of mirror particles—even mirror planets and mirror stars—has inspired many fantasies and works of fiction. However, the roots of this idea are standing on a solid particle physical model, which goes back to 1956 and the work of Lee and Yang [1] on the possible violation of mirror symmetry and its discovery only a year later by Wu et al. [2] and Garwin et al. [3]. This violation is manifest in the weak force, which interacts only with left-handed particles but cannot couple to right-handed ones. Already then, Lee and Yang proposed the concept of introducing mirror particles with right-handed interaction. In this broader sense, the breaking of mirror symmetry could be restored.