CP Violation in the K and B Systems

Abstract

Although CP violation was discovered more than thirty years ago, its origin is still unknown. In these lectures, we describe the CP-violating effects which have been seen in K decays, and explain how CP violation can be caused by the Standard Model weak interaction. The hypothesis that this interaction is indeed the origin of CP violation will be incisively tested by future experiments on B and K decays. We explain what quantities these experiments will try to determine, and how they will be able to determine them in a theoretically clean way. To clarify the physics of the K system, we give a phase-convention-free description of CP violation in this system. We conclude by briefly exploring whether electric dipole moments actually violate CP even if CPT invariance is not assumed.