- #1
Poop-Loops
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Okay, so I am making a website for my professor as work for him. He works on the ADMX and I need to learn about CP-violation to be able to write a description of it on the website.
I've already scoured wikipedia, read part of Intro to Elementary Particles by Griffiths, talked to my prof's grad student, and him. I am starting to understand it more and more, but a little bit more help on the subject would be very appreciated.
My understanding so far is that:
The Parity operator reverses the sign of whatever it is acting on, so for example, it acting on some Psi(x) wave-function would reverse the sign of all of the "x"s in the equation. It was thought to be conserved until it was shown that the weak force does not conserve it. The example they (wikipedia) use is that the neutron decays into a proton only when it can change the flavor of one of its quarks and in the process emit a W boson. I get that. Protons are made of different building blocks than neutrons. But then they say that weak interactions only work on left-handed particles. From there I get lost, since I've never met a neutron with hands.
As for charge, I think I get it. Charge conservation means that if you take the charge conjugate of whatever, nothing changes and everything works out. If you want to have the opposite operation, you need the opposite ingredients.
Multiplied together you get CP, which was thought that by multiplying C by P you get a new symmetry (the REAL symmetry) which would be conserved. Hah. So then they talk about QCD and I get confused. My professor explained stuff about that to me, but it was right before finals and now I've forgotten most of it.
The gist is that even though weak interactions maximally break P symmetry by only acting on left-handed particles, CP violation is very small, and that's the big question. My understanding of this breaks down when they hit QCD, since I don't know what it is and all of the buzz words make me want to cry.
Any help would be greatly appreciated. :D
I've already scoured wikipedia, read part of Intro to Elementary Particles by Griffiths, talked to my prof's grad student, and him. I am starting to understand it more and more, but a little bit more help on the subject would be very appreciated.
My understanding so far is that:
The Parity operator reverses the sign of whatever it is acting on, so for example, it acting on some Psi(x) wave-function would reverse the sign of all of the "x"s in the equation. It was thought to be conserved until it was shown that the weak force does not conserve it. The example they (wikipedia) use is that the neutron decays into a proton only when it can change the flavor of one of its quarks and in the process emit a W boson. I get that. Protons are made of different building blocks than neutrons. But then they say that weak interactions only work on left-handed particles. From there I get lost, since I've never met a neutron with hands.
As for charge, I think I get it. Charge conservation means that if you take the charge conjugate of whatever, nothing changes and everything works out. If you want to have the opposite operation, you need the opposite ingredients.
Multiplied together you get CP, which was thought that by multiplying C by P you get a new symmetry (the REAL symmetry) which would be conserved. Hah. So then they talk about QCD and I get confused. My professor explained stuff about that to me, but it was right before finals and now I've forgotten most of it.
The gist is that even though weak interactions maximally break P symmetry by only acting on left-handed particles, CP violation is very small, and that's the big question. My understanding of this breaks down when they hit QCD, since I don't know what it is and all of the buzz words make me want to cry.
Any help would be greatly appreciated. :D