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This thesis describes the thorough analysis of the rare B meson decay into φ K* on data taken by the Belle Collaboration at the B-meson-factory KEKB over 10 years. This reaction is very interesting, because it in principle allows the observation of CP-violation effects. In the Standard Model however, no CP violation in this reaction is expected. An observation of CP asymmetries thus immediately implies new physics. This thesis presents an amplitude analysis of this decay and the search for CP violation in detail and discusses methods to solve related problems: The quantification of multivariate dependence and the improvement of numeric evaluation speed of normalization integrals in amplitude analysis. In addition it provides an overview of the theory, experimental setup, (blind) statistical data analysis and estimation of systematic uncertainties.

In the first fractions of a second after the Big Bang lingers a question at the heart of our very existence: why does the universe contain matter but almost no antimatter? The laws of physics tell us that equal amounts of matter and antimatter were produced in the early universe—but then something odd happened. Matter won out over antimatter; had it not, the universe today would be dark and barren. But how and when did this occur? In The Mystery of the Missing Antimatter, Helen Quinn and Yossi Nir guide readers into the very heart of this mystery—and along the way offer an exhilarating grand tour of cutting-edge physics.

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.

This book provides a thorough introduction to the phenomenology of heavy flavour physics, those working on the B-factories, LHCb, BTeV, HERA and the Tevatron. It explains how heavy quark theory could be implemented on the lattice, and discusses the status of CP-violation in the neutral kaon system.