The Optical Analogue of Cp–violation

The peculiar features of the mixing in the neutral pseudoscalar mesonsK0−K0 can be introduced by the analogy to the optical polarization. The time-reversed not-invariant processes and the related phenomenon of CP -nonconservation can be then joined to the dissipative effects which yield a not vanishing imaginary part in the relevant propagation of electromagnetic radiation in a medium. Thus, the propagation of the two transverse polarization states can reproduce the peculiar asymmetries which are so common in the realm of high energy particle physics.