Barry Wicklund, High Energy Physics Division, Argonne National Laboratory
Flavor Physics and The Strange Beauty Clock
Physics Division Colloquium - 18 January 2008

In 2007 the CDF experiment at the Fermilab Tevatron reported a precise measurement of the 3 THz oscillation frequency of the strange beauty meson and its antiparticle. This mixing phenomenon, first predicted by Gell-Mann and Pais in 1954, has finally been established in all four of the possible ground-state neutral meson systems- the strange K0, the charmed D0, and the light and strange beauty states B0 and Bs. These second-order electroweak transitions have been the driving force in the modern understanding of flavor physics and CP violation. In particular, the relationship between B0 and Bs mixing provides a precise test of the Kobayashi-Maskawa explanation of CP violation.

ANL Physics Division Colloquium Schedule