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Comment on “Atomic and Molecular Parity Nonconservation and Sum Frequency Generation Solutions to the Ozma Problem” Robert A. Harris* Department of Chemistry, UniVersity of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, California 94720 ReceiVed: August 21, 2010 In the publication by Ji and Harris,1 two “Ozma problems” were defined and sum frequency generation, with parity violations, was used to unambiguously solve them. It was stated that, using the Land of Oz as imagery, the scenario presented fails if one does not know whether Oz is made up of matter or antimatter. This ambiguity is true if CP is conserved.2 However, CP is not conserved.3 It has long been recognized that the decay of neutral kaons supply “convention independent definitions of positive and negative charges”.4,5 CP violation also occurs in neutral B meson decay,6 which may be used to distinguish matter from antimatter. Indeed, recent experiments at Fermi lab point * E-mail:
[email protected].
to large dimuon charge asymmetry.7 If these results hold up, they too would give “convention independent” definitions of charge. All of the other conclusions in the paper1 are unchanged. As an aside, if in antimatter Oz the tin woodman’s heart were placed on the left side then because of CPT conservation the state would be unstable. Acknowledgment. I wish to thank Eugene Commins and Gino Segre for many informative conversations on CP violation. References and Notes (1) Ji, N.; Harris, R. A. J. Phys. Chem. B 2006, 110, 18744. (2) Feynman, R. P.; Leighton, R. B.; Sands, M. The Feynman Lectures on Physics; Addison Wesley Publication Co.: Reading, MA, 1965; Vol. III, Chapter 11. (3) Gottfried, K.; Weisskopf, V. Concepts of Particle Physics; Oxford University Press: New York, 1984; Vol. I, Chapter 11. (4) See p 153 of ref 3 for the explicit quote. (5) Lee, T. D. Particle physics and Introduction to Field Theory; Harwood Academic Publishers: Chur, Switzerland, 1988; Chapter 9. (6) Cahn, R.; Goldhaber, G. The Experimental Foundations of Particle Physics, 2nd ed.; Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, U.K., 2009; Chapter 15. (7) Abazov, V. M.; et al. Phys. ReV. Lett. 2010, 105, 081801.
JP1079422
10.1021/jp1079422 2010 American Chemical Society Published on Web 10/08/2010
