Flavour Physics and CP Violation

TL;DR

This paper reviews the significance of flavor physics and CP violation within the Standard Model, discusses experimental confirmations, explores implications for new physics, and examines potential solutions to flavor puzzles including minimal flavor violation and the Higgs boson.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of flavor physics, CP violation, and the theoretical and experimental developments, highlighting new physics implications and possible solutions to flavor puzzles.

Findings

B-factories confirmed the CKM mechanism as the main source of CP violation.

Flavor parameters of the Standard Model are puzzling and require explanations.

The Higgs-like boson offers new avenues for understanding flavor puzzles.

Abstract

We explain the many reasons for the interest in flavor physics. We describe flavor physics and the related CP violation within the Standard Model, and explain how the B-factories proved that the Kobayashi-Maskawa mechanism dominates the CP violation that is observed in meson decays. We explain the implications of flavor physics for new physics, with emphasis on the "new physics flavor puzzle", and present the idea of minimal flavor violation as a possible solution. We explain why the values flavor parameters of the Standard Model are puzzling, present the Froggatt-Nielsen mechanism as a possible solution, and describe how measurements of neutrino parameters are interpreted in the context of this puzzle. We show that the recently discovered Higgslike boson may provide new opportunities for making progress on the various flavor puzzles.