Neutrino CP violation

[Carrock]

From https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-52297058

Quote

New clue to anti-matter mystery

Physicists think that finding a difference - or asymmetry - in the physical properties of neutrinos and antineutrinos might help us understand why matter is so prevalent compared with antimatter. This asymmetry is known as charge-conjugation and parity reversal (CP) violation.

It is one of three necessary conditions, proposed by the Russian physicist Andrei Sakharov in 1967, that must be satisfied to produce matter and antimatter at different rates.

After analysing nine years' worth of data, the researchers found a mismatch in the way neutrinos and antineutrinos oscillate by recording the numbers that reached Super Kamiokande with a flavour different from the one they had been created with.

The result has also reached a level of statistical significance - called three-sigma - that's high enough to indicate that CP violation occurs in these particles.

The results have been published in the journal Nature.

......

"The violation of CP symmetry is one of the (Sakharov) conditions for a matter-dominated Universe to exist, but the quark-driven effect is unfortunately much too small to explain why our Universe is mainly filled with matter.

"Discovering CP violation with neutrinos would be a great leap forward in understanding how the Universe was formed."

 

This seems to be the first evidence for neutrino CP violation.

I don't know how significant the results might be.

The original paper is free to read in Nature.

 

[Curious layman]

Same story but there's an feature where you can click and drag to look around the inside of the detector. Seriously impressive.

https://www.quantamagazine.org/neutrino-evidence-could-explain-matter-antimatter-asymmetry-20200415/

Edited April 17, 2020 by Curious layman