The Optical Analogue of CP Violation

The peculiar features of the mixing in the neutral pseudoscalar mesons K0–antiK0 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.