T2K Experiment: Negotiating the Gatekeeper of the Matter-Antimatter Asymmetry Mystery

Chang Kee Jung, Professor of Physics, State University of New York at Stony Brook

Abstract:
Matter-antimatter asymmetry is one of the most outstanding mysteries of the universe that provided a necessary condition to our own existence. There have been various attempts to solve this mystery including 'Baryogenesis' hypothesis. However, the B-factory experiments during the last decades showed that the observed CP-violation in the quark sector is not big enough for baryogenesis to be a viable solution to the matter-antimatter asymmetry. This leads us to the 'Leptogenesis' hypothesis, in which CP-violation in the lepton section plays a crtical role to create the matter-antimater asymmetry at the onset of the Big Bang. Thus, experimental observation of CP-violation in the lepton sector could prove to be tantamount to one of the most important discoveries in our understanding of the universe. Recently the T2K experiment published a result that indicates a non-zero $\theta_{13}$, the last unknown mixing angle in the lepton sector, at 2.5 sigma level of significance. In this talk I will present the details of this result and its importance to the possible future CP-violation measurements in the lepton sector. I will also describe the T2K experiment in some detail, and present other recent results.


Last modified: Fri Oct 28 22:19:34 EDT 2011