CP VIOLATION AND MOLECULAR PHYSICS

The proof that a particle and its antiparticle have identical rest mass, which is based on the CPT invariance of the Hamiltonian, can be adapted to show that the CP enantiomers of a chiral molecule remain degenerate even in the presence of CP violation. This reinforces an earlier suggestion that the force responsible for CP violation exhibits false chirality with respect to CP enantiomorphism and leads naturally to the idea that the CP violation observed in the neutral K-meson system is analogous to a special type of chemical catalysis since it affects the rates of certain particle-antiparticle interconversion pathways (via a breakdown in microscopic reversibility) without affecting the initial and final particle energies and hence the equilibrium thermodynamics. CP violation of this type is unlikely to have any direct manifestations in molecular physics.