T Violation and CPT Tests in Neutral-Meson Systems

TL;DR

This review discusses T and CPT symmetry tests in neutral meson systems, highlighting the observation of T violation in K0-K0bar transitions and the current status of symmetry violations in other meson systems.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of experimental tests of T and CPT symmetries across all four neutral meson systems, including recent results and their implications.

Findings

T violation observed in K0-K0bar transitions independent of CPT assumptions

CP violation in B0 decays compatible with T violation only

No evidence of CPT violation in the studied meson systems

Abstract

The review covers transitions between M0 and M0bar in all four systems M0 = K0, D0, B0 and Bs. These systems are ideal laboratories for studying the discrete symmetries T and CPT. The properties of time reversal T are discussed in classical and quantum mechanics. T violation in K0 K0bar transitions has been observed in 1970 independent of assuming CPT symmetry by using the Bell-steinberger unitarity relation. Improvements of this observation are reviewed including the latest results in 2013. They show with high significance that CP violation in K0 K0bar transitions is only T violation without any CPT violation. Transitions in the other three systems do not show CP violation so far and therefore neither T nor CPT violation. The large observed CP violation in B0 -> J/psi K0 decays is presented to be compatible with only T and no CPT violation, the same for the very small but significant CP violation in decays K0 -> pi pi with isospin 2.