MSc. Yu Chen and MSc. Philip Fredholm

T a l k : 12. November 2026

An Introduction to Flavour Physics - Quarks, Symmetries and Searches

As the search for new physics continues, increasing the precision of measurements has become more and more important. To be able to read out statistically significant signals, processes where the Standard Model (SM) background may be considered to be small present an avenue which could likely be fruitful. One such sector is the so called flavour physics, which revolves around studying the structure of flavour in various SM processes. Due to a mechanism known as GIM suppression, flavour changing neutral currents (FCNCs) are suppresed in the SM. In this talk, we review the origin of weak interactions in the SM Lagrangian, the derivation of the CKM matrix and explain the main features of the GIM mechanism. We explain how to parametrise the CKM matrix and why it leads to CP violation, and then elaborate on both meson mixing and meson decay. Finally, we give an overview on the challenges associated with extracting useful information of the CKM matrix in the presence of non-perturbative effects.