Our Present Understanding of CP Violation

Abstract

If CP violation in the decays of neutral kaons is due to phases in the weak couplings of quarks, as encoded in the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa (CKM) matrix, there are many other experimental consequences. Notable among these are CP-violating rate asymmetries and triangle relations among decay rates in $B$ meson decays, while charmed particle decays should not be a good place to see CP-violating effects. In the context of the CKM and other models of CP violation, we discuss phenomena such as electric dipole moments, the baryon asymmetry of the Universe, and the strong CP problem, and speculate on a common origin for CP-violating phenomena.