CP Violation in the quark sector is an integral component of the explanation of the origin of the matter-antimatter asymmetry in the universe. The Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa (CKM) Matrix is the mechanism for CP Violation in the Standard Model of particle physics and within the CKM framework the largest CP violating effects are to be found in the b quark sector. The `B Factory' experiments and/or CDF/D0 at Fermilab will (hopefully) observe CP Violation in the B meson system sometime early next century. However, to fully explore the parameter space of the CKM mechanism - and hopefully see some new physics beyond the CKM mechanism - requires greater event samples than can be accumulated at the B Factories. Hadrons containing the b quark are copiously produced in proton-antiproton collisions - on the order of 10⁴ times the sample available to a B Factory - but the problem has always been extracting the signal events from an enormous background rate. A new dedicated CP Violation experiment, called BTeV, has been proposed to run early next century at the Fermilab Tevatron pp^- collider. In this talk I will outline the physics that can be probed by BTeV as well describe the spectrometer that is being designed. I will compare and contrast BTeV with the other experiments being performed around the world to examine the b quark sector of the CKM matrix, including considerations of the startup and running times of the various experiments.

Thursday, February 25th 1999, 15:30
Ernest Rutherford Physics Building, room 305