Testing CPT Symmetry with Neutral K Mesons: A Review

The neutral kaon system is a very peculiar system that offers unique possibilities to perform precise tests of the CPT symmetry. The entanglement of neutral kaon pairs that are produced at a ϕ-factory opens up new ways and scenarios in order to test this fundamental discrete symmetry. In this paper, the results of the most recent and significant CPT tests are reviewed. Experiments have set stringent limits on the CPT-violating parameters of different phenomenological models, some of them associated to possible decoherence mechanisms or Lorentz symmetry violation which might be justified in a quantum gravity framework. The present results show no violation of CPT symmetry, while their accuracy in some cases reaches the interesting level at which–in the most optimistic scenarios–quantum gravity effects might show up.

Chiral Symmetry

This chapter introduces chiral symmetry, the extra symmetry that QCD acquires when the masses of quarks are set to zero. It introduces the concept of spontaneous symmetry breaking and explains the spontaneous breaking of chiral symmetry in QCD. It introduces the concept of a Goldstone boson, a particle that has zero mass as the result of spontaneous symmetry breaking, and explains how this concept explains properties of the pi and K mesons and allows us to determine the underlying values of the quark masses.