Ryan Magee T violation As we mentioned in class, a violation in time reversal symmetry would be made evident by a non-zero neutron dipole

moment. So although the current upper bound on the nEDM is of order 10-26 e-cm, it is still possible to measure a non-zero value. Under time reversal, the magnetic dipole moment changes its direction and the nEDM does not. Parity reversal, on the other hand, changes the nEDM moment but not the nMDM. We can see that if a fundamental particle were to have an EDM, a system that underwent a P and T reversal would not be symmetric with respect to the original system. Thus measurement of an EDM for a neutron would thus violate not only P and T symmetry, but CP symmetry as well since we expect the broader CPT symmetry to hold. Thus I would propose to search for an electric dipole moment in neutrons, as well as for an electron or other fundamental particles. P violation The above methods would also work to observe a violation of parity-reversal. We also know that experiments have been done in the past to show the nonconservation of parity, such as the study of beta decay in Cobalt-60 in 1957. At low temperatures, the experimenters were able to control the direction of nuclear spins to be parallel to the applied magnetic field. After measuring the directions of emitted electrons, they observed that electrons were not emitted equally in both directions, as they should have been if parity were conserved. Instead, more were emitted opposite to the magnetic field (and opposite to the nuclear spin). While Im not sure we talked about it in class, I did have a conversation with a friend about neutrinos and their left-handedness. They have spins that are parallel to their velocity, and it appears impossible to boost to a frame where this would change. Thus they have an intrinsic, unchanging parity. This suggests to me that we could also observe the parity of any particles that decay into neutrinos, because we KNOW their handedness regardless of their direction of propagation. C violation As mentioned above, neutrinos have left-handed parity. Charge conjugation affects the sign of the charge, lepton number, baryon number, and strangeness. It doesnt affect, however, mass, energy, momentum, spin, or spatial coordinates. Thus if we apply a charge conjugation operator on a neutrino, we should obtain a left-handed antineutrino. There is not, however, any evidence for such a particle. Just as neutrinos are intrinsically left-handed, anti-neutrinos are intrinsically right handed. Thus in this case, our failure to observe a particle with this parity shows that charge conjugation symmetry can be violated. As an explicit experiment, I would suggest not only continuing to search for an anti-neutrino of this type, but I would also think

that observation of beta decays would continue to NOT obey charge conjugation symmetry. CP violation As mentioned in several of the sections above, there are several ways of detecting CP violation. The 1964 Kaon experiment showed that kaons transformed into antikaons and antikaons into kaons, but it was preferential in one direction. Since then, there have been other experiments that have demonstrated CP violation, most recently a 2011 study of neutral D meson decay at CERN. I suppose another way to test for CP violation could rely on the fact that two decays have the same odds of happening for fundamental particle/antiparticle pairs. Thus if we start with the same number of a specific particle/antiparticle pair, under CP symmetry we would expect the decay products to be produced in equal amounts. If we observe any differences, weve seen a violation of CP symmetry!