Pionic Measures of Parity and CP Violation in High Energy Nuclear Collisions

TL;DR

This paper proposes methods to measure parity and CP violation in high-energy nuclear collisions by analyzing the momenta of charged pions and kaons, providing a way to detect metastable vacua with specific symmetry properties.

Contribution

It introduces new global observables based on three-momenta that are sensitive to P, C, and CP violation, measurable event-by-event in nuclear collisions.

Findings

Estimated P-odd observables are around 10^(-3).

Method enables detection of metastable vacua with parity and CP violation.

Provides a practical approach for experimental measurements.

Abstract

The collisions of large nuclei at high energies could produce metastable vacua which are odd under parity, P, charge conjugation, C, and/or CP. Using only the three-momenta of charged pions (or kaons), we show how to construct global observables which are odd under P, C, and CP, and which can be measured on an event by event basis. Model dependent estimates of the P-odd observables are on the order of 10^(-3).