Flavor physics and lattice quantum chromodynamics

TL;DR

This paper reviews how lattice QCD techniques are used to understand flavor physics within the Standard Model, focusing on CP violation, meson decays, and constraints on new physics energy scales.

Contribution

It provides an overview of lattice QCD applications in flavor physics, detailing methods for studying CP violation and meson decay processes within the Standard Model framework.

Findings

Constraints on new physics energy scales from flavor experiments

Lattice QCD tools for studying K -> pi pi decays

Insights into CP violation mechanisms in meson systems

Abstract

The course begins with an introduction to the Standard Model, viewed as an effective field theory. Experimental and theoretical limits on the energy scales at which New Physics can appear, as well as current constraints on quark flavor parameters, are reviewed. The role of lattice QCD in obtaining these constraints is described. A second section is devoted to explaining the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa mechanism for quark flavor mixing and CP violation, and to detailing its most salient features. The third section is dedicated to the study of K -> pi pi decays. It comprises discussions of indirect CP violation through K^0-\bar K^0 mixing, of the \Delta I=1/2 rule and of direct CP violation. It presents some of the lattice QCD tools required to describe these phenomena ab initio.