In the big bang, matter and antimatter should have been created in equal amounts. But why is the universe today filled almost only with matter? Physicists attribute the different behaviour of matter and antimatter to the violation of the so-called CP symmetry.
This fundamental symmetry of nature states that laws of physics should not change when a particle is interchanged with its antiparticle and the signs of all its spatial coordinates are flipped.
Still, the extent of the observed CP violation is not sufficient to explain the actual excess of matter in the universe.
The Belle II experiment at the SuperKEKB accelerator in Japan aims to solve this great mystery of particle physics. It will also provide a crucial contribution to the study of bound QCD states, especially the search for exotic hadrons and glueballs.
Our activities in Belle II range from slow control of the complex detector systems, to studies of the production of hyper- and anti-nuclei in e+e- -collisions and searches for dark messengers.