Neutral B meson mixing Created 2026-10-25 Updated 2026-11-05
Neutral B meson mixing converts the flavor eigenstates and into one another through the weak interaction. The propagating mass eigenstates are and , with .
In units , neglect their width difference and take . Evolution of an initial at proper time gives the undecayed flavour probabilities
where and is the common decay width. Their sum is the survival probability, not one.
For a common final state, mixing and direct decay interfere through . In the Standard Model, combines a J/psi meson with a short-lived neutral kaon. Neglecting subleading weak amplitudes and small kaon CP violation,
Here the are CKM matrix elements; the minus sign reflects the approximate negative CP parity of this specified final state. A different charmonium-kaon final state need not have that same sign.[ref]
Short-lived neutral kaon 2026-11-05
The short-lived neutral kaon is one of the two propagating eigenstates of the effective neutral kaon mixing problem. It is a coherent combination , with coefficients depending on the phase convention and normalized so .
In the limit of exact CP symmetry, it is approximately the CP-even combination and readily decays to two pions; the corresponding long-lived state has different allowed decay channels. Small CP violation makes the exact identification with a CP eigenstate imperfect. The observation of two-pion decays in the nominally long-lived beam was therefore evidence for CP violation, not a redefinition of the short-lived state.[ref]