Violation of Time-Reversal Invariance and CPLEAR Measurements

Abstract

Motivated by the recent CPLEAR measurement on the time-reversal non-invariance, we review the situation concerning the experimental measurements of charge conjugation, parity violation and time reversibility, in systems with non-Hermitean Hamiltonians. This includes in particular neutral meson systems, like K0-barK0, D0-barD0 and B0-barB0. We discuss the formalism that describes particle-antiparticle mixing and time evolution of states, paying particular emphasis to the orthogonality conditions of incoming and outgoing states. As a result, we confirm that the CPLEAR experiment makes a direct measurement of violation of time-reversal without any assumption of unitarity and CPT-violation. The asymmetry which signifies T-violation, is found to be independent of time and decay processes.