International Meeting Sheds Light on Antimatter

More than 200 renowned particle physicists from Asia, Europe and North America will arrive on campus this week for an international meeting intended to shed light on the perplexing question of why the universe is composed of matter and not antimatter, the mirror image of matter.

Antimatter, which is not a science fiction fantasy, can be actually created in subatomic particle colliders. However, these strange subatomic particles are not part of our daily existence because they are quickly annihilated when they come into contact with matter.

Since matter and antimatter should have been created in nearly equal amounts during the birth of the universe, a longstanding question among physicists has been what made nature favor matter over antimatter. Was it a chance occurrence during the birth of the universe? Or an inevitable outcome of some quirk or asymmetry that physicists do not yet understand in the laws of nature?

This possible asymmetry, known as charge-parity violation, or CP violation for short, will be the focus of the meeting, according to organizer Vivek Sharma, a physics professor at UCSD and one of the world's leaders in this field.

"At this workshop," Sharma adds, "physicists will be looking at the experimental clues to determine a complete theory of the origin of CP violation phenomenon and the connections between the CP violation that occurred in the early cosmos with the CP violation observed in the subatomic systems at the powerful matter-antimatter smashers in Japan, the United States and Europe."

While participation at the workshop, which will take place at the Price Center from March 15 to 18, requires registration, Sharma welcomes anyone at UCSD interested in the subject who wants to attend, particularly in the less technical plenary sessions. More information on the workshop and the program can be found at http://ckm2005.ucsd.edu.