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CP violation
CP (charge conjugation - parity) is a symmetry that relates particles to antiparticles. CP violation occurs when there is a difference in the way that particles and antiparticles interact. It is believed to be necessary for the excess of matter over antimatter observed in the universe.
CP violation was discovered by the American physicists James Watson Cronin (1931–) and Val Logsdon Fitch (1923–) as a result of an experiment in 1964 which examined the decay of kaons (K-mesons) and showed that a reaction run in reverse does not retrace exactly the path of the original reaction. For this discovery Cronin and Fitch were awarded the 1980 Nobel Prize in Physics.
Related entry
• CPT theorem
Related category
• PARTICLE PHYSICS
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