Antonio Di Domenico (Rome):

Hunting for CPT symmetry and Quantum Mechanics violations in neutral meson systems

Abstract:

CPT symmetry, i.e. the symmetry under the combination of charge conjugation, parity, and time reversal transformations, experimentally appears to be the only discrete symmetry of Quantum Mechanics respected in Nature. Even though this result has a very solid theoretical foundation in the well known CPT theorem - which holds for standard quantum field theories formulated on flat space-times - tiny CPT violation effects could be justified in the framework of a quantum theory of gravity with non trivial space-time topologies, in some cases implying a loss of quantum coherence in single and entangled states.

Therefore the discovery of CPT violation would have dramatic consequences on our present theoretical picture and would definitely constitute an unambiguous signal of New Physics beyond the Standard Model.

In this lecture the last and more refined experimental searches for CPT violation effects will be reviewed with a special focus on the tests performed on neutral meson systems and the interplay between CPT symmetry and the basic principles of Quantum Mechanics.

So far no deviation from the expectations of CPT symmetry and Quantum Mechanics is observed, while the precision of the measurements, in some cases, reaches the interesting Planck scale region, where CPT violation effects driven by quantum gravity might show up.

Finally, prospects for this kind of experimental studies will be presented.

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