Our current understanding of the fundamental building blocks of the Universe, summarised by the Standard Model of particle physics, is incomplete. For example, it fails to explain why we do not see equal, or almost equal, numbers of particles and their antiparticle partners. To explain this asymmetry requires, among other effects, a mechanism known as charge-parity (CP) violation that causes differences between the rates at which particles and antiparticles decay. CP violation is seen in systems containing bottom and strange quarks, but not in those with up, charm or top quarks. This thesis describes searches for particle-antiparticle asymmetries in the decay rates of charmed mesons. No evidence of CP violation is found. With current sensitivities, an asymmetry large enough to observe probably could not be explained by the Standard Model. Instead an explanation could come from new physics, for example contributions from supersymmetric or other undiscovered heavy particles. In the thesis, the development of new techniques to search for these asymmetries is described. They are applied to data from the LHCb experiment at CERN to make precise measurements of asymmetries in the D^+->K^-K^+pi^+ decay channel. This is the most promising charged D decay for CP violation searches.

This book is dedicated to Lev Okun, who passed away in November 2015. He was a true pioneer in probing fundamental dynamics.The book has two objectives. First is to showcase Okun's impact for decades since 1963, when he published his remarkable book Weak Interaction of Elementary Particles. Second is to present the current progress of our scientific community in the studies of our Universe. New directions and possible future developments are discussed, often using the past as a guide. The authors mostly focus on CP asymmetries in the transitions of hadrons and leptons, but they also discuss their rare decays, and talk about axions and supersymmetry, and possible connections with dark matter, extra dimensions, baryogenesis and multiverse.This book is suitable for readers who know quantum mechanics and quantum field theories in general.

This book is the second edition of an excellent undergraduate-level overview of classical and modern physics, intended for students of physics and related subjects, and also perfectly suited for the education of physics teachers. The twelve-chapter book begins with Newton’s laws of motion and subsequently covers topics such as thermodynamics and statistical physics, electrodynamics, special and general relativity, quantum mechanics and cosmology , the standard model and quantum chromodynamics. The writing is lucid, and the theoretical discussions are easy to follow for anyone comfortable with standard mathematics. An important addition in this second edition is a set of exercises and problems, distributed throughout the book. Some of the problems aim to complement the text, others to provide readers with additional useful tools for tackling new or more advanced topics. Furthermore, new topics have been added in several chapters; for example, the discovery of extra-solar planets from the wobble of their mother stars, a discussion of the Landauer principle relating information erasure to an increase of entropy, quantum logic, first order quantum corrections to the ideal gas equation of state due to the Fermi-Dirac and Bose-Einstein statistics. Both gravitational lensing and the time-correction in geo-positioning satellites are explained as theoretical applications of special and general relativity. The discovery of gravitational waves, one of the most important achievements of physical sciences, is presented as well. Professional scientists, teachers, and researchers will also want to have this book on their bookshelves, as it provides an excellent refresher on a wide range of topics and serves as an ideal starting point for expanding one’s knowledge of new or unfamiliar fields. Readers of this book will not only learn much about physics, they will also learn to love it.

The week-long Lake Louise Winter Institute starts with three days of pedagogical lectures by invited speakers, and the remainder of the time is for short presentations on current research topics. This year, the theme of the Institute was 'Topics in Electroweak Physics'. The invited lecturers were Drs E G Adelberger, G Altarelli, J Ellis, J-M Poutissou, B Sadoulet and S Wojcicki.