Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-particle-physics-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2017/2/e/solution

The charged two-pion and three-pion channels can be assigned to the same spin-zero kaon by their parent mass and lifetime. For two spinless pions, total angular momentum zero forces their relative orbital angular momentum to zero, so the product of their intrinsic parities gives
For three spinless pions, use Jacobi orbital angular momenta . Coupling them to total zero requires , and hence
Thus both channels cannot conserve parity in decays of one parent with a definite parity. The weak decay interaction permits the observed coexistence.
Dalitz plots identify the three-body events, determine their internal kinematics, and allow amplitude and angular-momentum analyses through their populations and resonance structures. Together with the spin and parent-identity evidence, they support the parity assignment. They are not a standalone parity-odd observable: reversing all three momenta leaves every , and therefore every point on the plot, unchanged. A flat distribution by itself cannot establish parity violation without the channel and spin information.

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