This thesis reports on the final measurement of the flavor-mixing phase in decays of strange-bottom mesons (B_s) into J/psi and phi mesons performed in high-energy proton-antiproton collisions recorded by the Collider Experiment at Fermilab. Interference occurs between direct decays and decays following virtual particle-antiparticle transitions (B_s-antiB_s). The phase difference between transition amplitudes (“mixing phase”) is observable and extremely sensitive to contributions from non-standard-model particles or interactions that may be very hard to detect otherwise – a fact that makes the precise measurement of the B_s mixing phase one of the most important goals of particle physics. The results presented include a precise determination of the mixing phase and a suite of other important supplementary results. All measurements are among the most precise available from a single experiment and provide significantly improved constraints on the phenomenology of new particles and interactions.

The exciting experiments of the BABAR and BELLE collaborations have now proven violation of CP symmetry in the neutral B system. This has renewed strong interest in the physics of CP violation. Novel experimental techniques and new highly intense neutron sources are now becoming available to further test the related time reversal symmetry. They will substantially lower the current limit on the neutron electric dipole moment and hence open up new tests of theoretical concepts beyond the Standard Model. These are strongly required to explain the decisive excess of matter versus antimatter in our Universe. There is a de?nite need to communicate these exciting developments to younger scientists, and therefore we organized a summer school in October 2000 on “CP Violation and Related Topics”, which was held in Prerow, a small Baltic Sea resort. These Lecture Notes were inspired by the vivid - terest of the participants, and I am grateful to the authors, who faced the unexpected and delivered all the material for an up-to-date introduction to this broad ?eld. It is a great pleasure for me to warmly thank the Co-organizers of the summer school, Henning Schr ̈oder, Thomas Mannel, Klaus R. Schubert and my colleague Roland Waldi. Also I would like to express my sincere thanks to the Volkswagen-Stiftung for their ?nancial support of this inspiring summer school.

CP violation was first observed in 1964, but only in 1999 did we gain much greater experimental insight. Direct CP violation finally appeared in the form of ε′/ε in the K system. Indirect CP violation in B → J/Ψ Ks decay, the raison d'être for construction of e+e- B factories, was first sniffed out at the proton-antiproton collider. The asymmetric B factories — BABAR at SLAC and BELLE at KEK — were completed, while the symmetric B factory at Cornell was upgraded to CLEO-III. It seems that everyone is positioning himself for the great competition on “B Physics and CP Violation”, racing to unravel the Kobayashi-Maskawa matrix, especially the size and origin of CP phases. The change of millennium provides a dramatic backdrop.To have intensive discussions at the technical level, to create broader interest in the subject, and to maximize interaction between experimenters and theorists, this book starts with the status of B factories: accelerator, detector and physics analysis. Following an overview of B physics and the CKM matrix, it delves into the details of lifetime, spectroscopy and decays, with even more specialized discussions on rare decays, direct and indirect CP violation, factorization and final state interactions, determination of unitarity phases, etc. Topics on ε′/ε, rare K decay, charm and hyperon systems, and various T, CP and CPT tests are also discussed at length. The book closes with the outlook for hadron machines and the prospects for new physics. A special feature is that there are two summary talks, one on experiment and the other on theory. The book is further augmented by two dozen excellent contributed talks.

CP violation is one of the most subtle effects in the Standard Model of particle physics and may be the first clue to the physics that lies beyond. Charge conjugation, C, and parity, P, are symmetries of particle interactions. C corresponds to the operation of replacing a particle by its antiparticle, while P is the operation of mirror reflection. Before 1956, it was believed that these were also symmetries of the interactions of elementary particles. In 1956, C S Wu found evidence for P violation in the weak interaction. Theorists proposed that the combination of CP would be a symmetry of the weak interaction. In 1964, Christenson, Cronin, Fitch and Turlay found the first evidence for the violation of CP symmetry in the decays of kaons.Although Kobayashi and Maskawa then showed how the Standard Model can accommodate the observed CP violation, Wolfenstein pointed out that it is also possible that there is a new interaction in addition to the usual four, called the superweak interaction, which is responsible for the asymmetry. To test this idea, the observation of a different type of asymmetry, called direct CP violation, is required; in the kaon sector, very precise measurements of the ratio of kaon decay rates are necessary. In B decay modes where a second order weak process whimisically named “penguin” interferes with another suppressed, first order “tree” amplitude, it may also be possible to observe these direct CP-violating effects.B physics and CP violation is now one of the major growth areas in high energy physics. Nearly every major high energy physics laboratory now has a project underway to observe the large CP asymmetries expected in the B sector and to test the consistency of the Standard Model. The unitarity of the Kobayashi-Maskawa mixing matrix in the Standard Model implies the existence of three phases, called alpha, beta and gamma, which can be determined by the measurements of CP asymmetries in B decays. About 200 participants gathered in Hawaii in March 1997 to discuss the progress in the field, and this important book constitutes the proceedings of that conference.

CP violation is essential to understanding the universe in which we live. Without it there can be no dominance of matter over anti-matter. New experimental facilities, such as the B-factories, and new experimental techniques promise the first real advances in our understanding of this phenomenon since its discovery in the mid-60's.The Workshop on CP violation brought together representatives of all the major experimental collaborations and key theorists. The result is an excellent introduction to the directions in which the field will move in the next few years.

This book offers the first strong evidence of the existence of CP violation in neutral B decays extracted from sophisticated B factories in the US and Japan. It also holds out the expectation of rare B decays and D, K physics in the near future. In addition, new physics beyond the Standard Model is described. Both experimental and theoretical points of view are given.

Proceedings of the Third International Conference on B Physics and CP Violation, held in Taipei, Taiwan, December 3-7, 1999. The main focus of the conference was to discuss the state of the art and future prospects of the field, at a high technical level. The fifth conference is to be held in May 2002 in Philadelphia. The Fourth took place in Central Japan in February 2001.zation.