Effective Hamiltonian for neutral-meson mixing ($H_{\mathrm{eff}}=M-i\Gamma /2$)

A decaying particle-antiparticle pair is described by a two-dimensional effective Hamiltonian for neutral-meson mixing with dispersive matrix $M$ and decay matrix $\Gamma$, both Hermitian matrices. The effective Hamiltonian for neutral-meson mixing itself is generally not a Hermitian matrix. CPT symmetry equates its diagonal entries, by separately equating diagonal masses and decay widths. For $H_{\mathrm{eff}}=\left(\begin{array}{cc}a& b\\ c& a\end{array}\right)$ the eigenvalues are $a\pm \sqrt{bc}$ and generic eigenvectors are $(\sqrt{b},\pm \sqrt{c}{)}^T$, with correlated square-root branches. Complex eigenvalues give masses and decay widths through $\mu =m-i\Gamma /2$.