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Disclamer

Before I continue, I'd like to state clearly that I'm by no means an expert in this field. What I regularly do is read popular literature on this topic (if such a thing could be considered 'popular' :) ), and follow several YT channels. Ocasionally (and these occasions are getting fewer and fewer), when I find some free time, I spend it reading textbooks on quantum mechanics.

The Question

Having said the previous disclamer, allow me move to the question.

I've been listening and reading about CP symmetry violation problem for a long time, and there is this quesiton pondering my mind for a while. Could the problem be resolved by assuming that the universes are created in pairs where one universe would contain matter and the other antimatter?

ercegovac
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  • Which specific "CP violation problem" are you trying to solve here? The most famous one is that the amount of CP violation in the Standard Model is not enough to explain the amount of matter in this universe (which is the result of a small imbalance in the amount of matter and antimatter in the universe during its early history). It's not clear how another universe would solve that problem. – probably_someone Apr 26 '20 at 23:34
  • I was thinking about that in particular. I'm not sure what you mean by "it's not clear how another universe would solve the problem?" Wouldn't existence of such a universe containing only antimatter solve the problem by itself? – ercegovac Apr 26 '20 at 23:45
  • To reiterate once more, of someone with sufficient knowledge considers the question pointless and stupid, please feel free to close it as such. As I said I'm just a layman curious about this. – ercegovac Apr 26 '20 at 23:47
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    assuming that the universes are created in pairs We have no complete theory of how the universe was formed, let alone one we could modify it to consider the creation of a pair of universe (whatever that even means). As such we're not dealing with mainstream physics here, IMO, which makes it off-topic. – StephenG - Help Ukraine Apr 27 '20 at 00:56
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  • @PM2Ring, thanks this is something I was thinking about. I knew that the question goes beyond the standard model, but I wasn't sure what exactly to search for. With this pointed out I agree that the question is off the topic. – ercegovac Apr 27 '20 at 07:47
  • And even though the question is out of topic, perhaps keep it for the reference to the linked question. Or add few more tags to the other question to improve search engine indexing (I don't have sufficient rating to do so) – ercegovac Apr 27 '20 at 08:02
  • @StephenG I agree that it is not mainstream. But the comment below by PMRing shows me the next step in this search. – ercegovac Apr 27 '20 at 08:06
  • Your question isn't wildly non-mainstream, (that is, various flavours of twinned universe theory have been proposed by various legitimate cosmologists over the years), and it's received a good answer. I don't think it needs to be closed. And the system has now linked this question with the one I answered. – PM 2Ring Apr 27 '20 at 08:16

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The most common problem with CP violation in the Standard Model is: there isn't enough of it to explain what we see. In short, an extra CP-swapped universe doesn't help solve this, because making matter and antimatter balanced doesn't solve the problem.


The early universe was, at one point, hot and dense enough that matter and antimatter were produced spontaneously as products of the average thermal interaction. As the universe expanded and cooled, it eventually cooled below the temperature at which this is possible. Once this happened, the matter and antimatter in the universe began to annihilate with each other, producing photons as a result.

Suppose physics preserved CP symmetry. This would mean that the hot universe would thermally produce exactly* the same amount of matter and antimatter. So, when the universe cooled below that production threshold, every matter particle would have annihilated with an antimatter particle, and vice versa. After that annihilation event, there would be no matter or antimatter left, and our universe would just be populated with radiation.

Of course, we know this isn't the case; in particular, there's quite a bit of matter in the universe. Based on the amount of matter that we know to exist, and the fact that we don't see any large objects that are made of antimatter anywhere, we can calculate that, before the annihilation event, there was a tiny bit more matter than antimatter - around one part per billion. This imbalance means that some matter was left over with no antimatter to annihilate, and this is the matter that we currently see.

We also know that the Standard Model predicts some amount of CP violation; we can see that matter is produced very slightly more often than antimatter in certain reactions. But the amount of CP violation it predicts isn't enough to explain the part-per-billion imbalance in matter over antimatter in the early universe.


Your proposal is that our universe is twins with another universe where all of the matter has been exchanged with antimatter. But remember how this universe is going to evolve: if it operates under the same physics as this universe, then matter is still going to be preferred in reactions in this universe. In order to get the matter-antimatter balance right after the annihilation event, you're going to have to set this universe up such that it started out with more antimatter. In particular, you're going to conclude that this twin universe is going to start with around two parts per billion more antimatter than matter, while our universe started with the same amount of matter and antimatter. So you're really just kicking the can down the road: you've made the amount of matter and antimatter balanced, but now you have to answer the question: why did the twin universe start with so much more antimatter than matter, while our universe had balanced initial conditions? You haven't really solved anything, you've just changed the unanswered question.

In response to this, you might make the twin universe have different physics than our universe. In particular, you might say that both universes have the same initial conditions, but the twin universe has a version of the Standard Model in which CP symmetry is violated in the opposite way (let's call it the "anti-Standard Model"). So, in the twin universe, antimatter would be preferred to the same extent that matter is preferred in our universe. So now we have one universe with 1 part per billion more matter than antimatter during the annihilation event, and another universe with 1 part per billion more antimatter than matter at that time. This means that the total amount of antimatter and matter, taken across both universes, is balanced. But now you've just got two copies of the original problem: in our universe, the CP violation predicted by the Standard Model is not enough to explain how much matter there is in the universe. Meanwhile, in the twin universe, the CP violation predicted by the anti-Standard Model is not enough to explain how much antimatter there is in the twin universe. So you're back to square one: why does the (anti)-Standard Model incorrectly predict how much (anti)matter there is in the (twin) universe?


*Well, not exactly exactly, if the universe turns out to be finite, but close enough that the difference would be negligible.