Department of Physics, Graduate School of Science
I’m a physics major in the Graduate School of Science, specializing in high energy physics. It is believed that in the early universe there was equal numbers of matter and antimatter, but now the universe is matter-dominated. This is explained by the difference in the reaction between particles and antimatter (CP violation), which can be explained by the Standard Model, but is still insufficient to explain a matter-dominated universe. Therefore, new physics that further breaks CP symmetry is needed.
I’m participating in the KOTO experiment, which is dedicated to search for the neutral kaon rare decay . This decay breaks CP symmetry and the decay probability is predicted to with small theoretical uncertainty. Therefore, even small discrepancies between experimental and predicted values indicate the existence of new physics.
Since this decay has not been observed yet, we will improve the sensitivity of the experiment by improving the detector and acquiring lots of data and aim to observe this decay in the future.