Description
In the first fractions of a second after the Big Bang lingers a question at the heart of our very existence: why does the universe contain matter but almost no antimatter? The laws of physics tell us that equal amounts of matter and antimatter were produced in the early universe—but then something odd happened. Matter won out over antimatter; had it not, the universe today would be dark and barren.
But how and when did this occur? In The Mystery of the Missing Antimatter, Helen Quinn and Yossi Nir guide readers into the very heart of this mystery—and along the way offer an exhilarating grand tour of cutting-edge physics.
Chapter
Running the Clock Forward: Matter and Antimatter
Dirac Introduces Antimatter
Experiments Confirm That Antimatter Exists
Radioactive Decays of Nuclei
Pauli: The Beta Decay Puzzle
Fermi: The Theory of Neutrinos Develops
Cowan and Reines: Neutrinos Detected
Strange Mesons, Strange Quantum Concepts
7. Through the Looking Glass
What Physicists Mean by the Term Symmetry
8. Through the Looking Antiglass
Another Gedanken Experiment
Cronin and Fitch: Matter and Antimatter Do Not Follow the Laws
9. The Survival of Matter
Pauli's Other Letter: Initial Conditions on the Universe
Sakharov: The Conditions Needed to Develop an Imbalance
Cosmology with Sakharov's Conditions Met: Baryogenesis
Why Don't We See the Quarks?
The Missing Charm, the Surprising Tau
The Standard Model: Particles and Interactions
Stored Energy, Forces, and Energy Conservation
Force Fields Permeating Space
Field Theory and the Energy Function
Symmetries as Answers to the Question "Why?"
Symmetries and Conservation Laws
Baryon and Lepton Number Conservation?
13. Standard Model Gauge Symmetries
The Symmetry behind the Electromagnetic Interaction
The Symmetry behind the Strong Interaction
The Symmetry behind the Weak Interaction
The Puzzle of Particle Masses
How Do We Describe Nothing?
At Last, CP Violated in the Standard Model
15. It Still Doesn't Work!
Running the Clock Forward: The Standard Model
Data Handling and Analysis
Testing the Standard Model in B-Meson Decays
Oddone: How to Build B Factories?
Running the B Factories: The First Test
Why Are We Never Satisfied?
Way beyond the Standard Model
Davis, Bahcall, Koshiba: Solar Neutrinos
Quantum Neutrino Properties
20. Following the New Clues
Some Things We Speculate About
Appendix: A Timeline of Particle Physics and Cosmology
Relevant Nineteenth-Century Developments
1900–1930: Development of Quantum Ideas, Beginnings of Scientific Cosmology
1930–1950: New Particles, New Ideas
1930–1960s: The Advent of Accelerator Experiments—The Particle Explosion; Implications of Expanding Universe Explored
1964–1973: Formulation of the Modern View of Particles and the Universe
Two Standard Models Emerge—Particles and Cosmology
The Mystery of the Missing Antimatter
：The Mystery of the Missing Antimatter
( Science Essentials )
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