Yeah this is much better than the title article.

K-Kbar mixing was observed decades ago.

The headline here should be about the first measurement of a mass asymmetry between matter and antimatter.

> The headline here should be about the first measurement of a mass asymmetry between matter and antimatter.

The mass difference is not between particle and antiparticle, but between the mass eigenstates, which are not antiparticles of eachother. It's also not the first Δm to be measured. In fact, it was the last remaining one.

So if the mass eigenstates aren't different then you don't get mixing between the flavor eigenstates, so this is expected? And by measuring the frequency of the FCNCs then that is what gives them the difference between the mass eigenstates? (bear with me, its been 25 years since I decided to become a programmer instead...)

Δm is directly proportional to the frequency of the oscillation. (In natural units it is exactly the angular frequency: cos(Δm·t) appears in the decay rate) So indeed Δm=0 means no oscillation. You measure it by essentially counting the number of particle and antiparticle decays as a function of decay-time.

What about charged systems like proton-antiproton? We expect there to be some similarly tiny Δm there, but obviously you can't have FCNC because its no longer neutral?

Protons and antiprotons must have the same mass under CPT symmetry

What fascinates me is that these oscillations appear to be continuous. What is it exactly that they're measuring/showing in the decay plot?

Shouldn't the state transitions be discrete events, and therefore the plot show a square wave instead of a sine?

The time-dependent probability of being in either flavour eigenstate is sinusoidal. It's not like a ticking clock.

how did you get the #Deltamc in the link?

I copied the link from an email sent by the guy who maintains the page.

oh ok so those are internal tags I though there was a index somewhere to navegate without going all over, thanks