The final public oral examination of Kirill Korotushenko will take place on Friday, July 30, 2004 at 3:00 p.m. in Room 202. The examining committee will consist of Professors D. Marlow, A. J. S. Smith, P. Meyers and I. Klebanov. Any other members of the University wishing to attend the examination may do so.

The thesis of Kirill Korotushenko entitled "Probing the symmetry of nature. (CP Violation in B -> J/psi K_L Decays)", has been placed on deposit on July 8, 2004.

Any member of the University wishing to read the thesis may do so. Any objections should be submitted to me in writing. The principal advisor for this work was Professor Daniel Marlow. The abstract is below

ABSTRACT

In this work we present a measurement of the CP-violation parameter \sin 2\phi₁ determined through the difference between the time-dependent decay rates for the B⁰ -> J/psi K_L and \bar B⁰ -> J/psi K_L transitions.

We also show improved selection criteria, which allows us, to increase the reconstruction efficiency by 40% and decrease the statistical error in sin 2\phi₁ by 25%. In addition, we will present a detailed overview of the K_L and J/psi detection and reconstruction.

Using 78 fb^-1 of e⁺e^- collision data, collected with the Belle detector at the KEKB accelerator, we reconstruct 2054 J/psi K_L candidates, with an estimated signal purity of 57 +/- 3%. Using 1714 of these candidates, we measure sin 2\phi₁ = 0.51 +/- 0.12 (statistical) +/- 0.07 (systematic)

The measurements presented take advantage of the excellent design of the Belle KLM detector. They are in good agreement with the results from other experiments.

Daniel Marlow
Chair, Dept. of Physics