Abstract: Symmetry transformations have been proven a bedrock tool for understanding the nature of particle interactions, formulating, and testing fundamental theories. Based on the up to now unbroken CPT symmetry, the violation of the CP symmetry between matter and antimatter by weak interactions, discovered in the decay of kaons in 1964 and observed more recently in 2001 in B mesons, strongly suggests that the behavior of these particles under weak interactions must also be asymmetric under time reversal T. However, until recent years there has not been a direct detection of the expected time-reversal violation in the time evolution of any system. This Colloquium examines the field of time-reversal symmetry breaking in the fundamental laws of physics. For transitions, its observation requires an asymmetry with exchange of initial and final states. A discussion is given of the conceptual basis for such an exchange with unstable particles, using the quantum properties of Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen entanglement available at B meson factories combined with the decay as a filtering measurement. The method allows a clear-cut separation of different transitions between flavor and CP eigenstates in the decay of neutral B mesons. These ideas have been implemented for the experiment by the BABAR Collaboration at SLAC's B factory. The results, presented in 2012, prove beyond any doubt the violation of time-reversal invariance in the time evolution between these two states of the neutral B meson.

Abstract: We study the collisional aspects of jet quenching in a high-energy nuclear collision, especially in the final state pion gas. The jet has a large energy, and acquires momentum transverse to its axis more effectively by multiple soft collisions than by few hard scatterings (as known from analogous systems such as J/psi production at Hera). Such regime of large E and small momentum transfer corresponds to Regge kinematics and is characteristically dominated by the pomeron. From this insight we estimate the jet quenching parameter in the hadron medium (largely a pion gas) at the end of the collision, which is naturally small and increases with temperature in line with the gas density and compare it to the jet quenching parameter obtained within the quark-gluon plasma (QGP) phase in widely known perturbative approximations. The physics in the quark-gluon plasma/liquid phase is less obvious, and here we revisit a couple of simple estimates that suggest indeed that the pomeron-mediated interactions are very relevant and should be included in analysis of the jet quenching parameter. Finally, since the occasional hard collisions produce features characteristic of a Levy flight in the q(perpendicular to)(2) plane perpendicular to the jet axis, we suggest one- and two-particle q perpendicular to correlations as interesting experimental probes sensitive to the nature (softness versus hardness) of the interactions of a jet inside the QGP.

Abstract: We study the contribution of new sets of two-loop Barr-Zee type diagrams to the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon within the two-Higgs-doublet model framework. We show that some of these contributions can be quite sizeable for a large region of the parameter space and can significantly reduce, and in some cases even explain, the discrepancy between the theoretical prediction and the experimentally measured value of this observable. Analytical expressions are given for all the calculations performed in this work.