http://www.worldscientific.com/worldscibooks/10.1142/0496

The authors present updated measurements of time-dependent CP asymmetries in fully-reconstructed neutral B decays to several CP eigenstates containing a charmonium meson. The measurements use a data sample of (383 ± 4) x 106 [Upsilon](4S) → B{bar B} decays collected with the BABAR detector at the PEP-II B factory. They determine sin2[beta] = 0.714 ± 0.032(stat) ± 0.018(syst) and.

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.

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.

This thesis describes a high-quality, high-precision method for the data analysis of an interesting elementary particle reaction. The data was collected at the Japanese B-meson factory KEKB with the Belle detector, one of the most successful large-scale experiments worldwide. CP violation is a subtle quantum effect that makes the world look different when simultaneously left and right and matter and antimatter are exchanged. This being a prerequisite for our own world to have developed from the big bang, there are only a few experimental indications of such effects, and their detection requires very intricate techniques. The discovery of CP violation in B meson decays garnered Kobayashi and Maskawa, who had predicted these findings as early as 1973, the 2008 Nobel prize in physics. This thesis describes in great detail what are by far the best measurements of branching ratios and CP violation parameters in two special reactions with two charm mesons in the final state. It presents an in-depth but accessible overview of the theory, phenomenology, experimental setup, data collection, Monte Carlo simulations, (blind) statistical data analysis, and systematic uncertainty studies.

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.

The articles collected in this volume are mainly concerned with the phenomenological description of the 1964 discovery on K° decay that CP invariance was violated in nature. The variety of models developed to explain this CP violation are described together with reprints of more recent definitive experiments, and CP violation in the B° system and the electric dipole moment of the neutron is also covered.