Makoto Kobayashi

Makoto Kobayashi is a Japanese theoretical physicist who shared the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physics for explaining CP violation through a framework with six quarks.

CP violation: A difference between the behavior of physical processes and their CP-transformed counterparts. Kobayashi and Toshihide Maskawa proposed a quark framework that accounts for this symmetry breaking.
Toshihide Maskawa: A Japanese theoretical physicist who shared the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physics for work on CP violation. Maskawa and Kobayashi jointly developed the six-quark explanation.
Kaon: A meson containing a strange quark or antiquark, known for exhibiting neutral-particle mixing and CP violation. CP violation was first observed in neutral kaon decays, prompting the theoretical puzzle Kobayashi and Maskawa addressed.
B meson: A meson containing a bottom quark or antiquark. B-meson decays provide rich tests of the CP-violating effects predicted by the quark mixing framework.
Quark: An elementary particle that combines with other quarks to form hadrons such as protons and neutrons. The six-quark framework at the heart of Kobayashi's explanation describes quark mixing.
Cabibbo angle: A parameter describing mixing between the first two generations of quarks in weak interactions. The earlier two-generation account had no phase capable of explaining CP violation.
Cronin–Fitch experiment: The 1964 experiment that discovered CP violation in neutral kaon decays. Its discovery posed the problem that Kobayashi and Maskawa sought to explain.
Belle experiment: A particle-physics experiment at KEK in Japan that studied B mesons and CP violation. Belle's measurements tested the framework's predictions in B-meson decays.
Cabibbo–Kobayashi–Maskawa matrix: A matrix describing how quark flavor states mix in weak interactions. It gives mathematical form to Kobayashi and Maskawa's account of CP violation.
Quark mixing: The phenomenon in which weak interactions connect quark flavor states to different mass states. Kobayashi and Maskawa extended its description to three generations.

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Nagoya UniversityRelated: Kobayashi earned his doctorate at Nagoya University and developed influential particle-physics theory.