CPT and effective Hamiltonians for neutral kaon and similar complexes

Abstract

We begin with a discussion of the general form and general CP-- and CPT-- transformation properties of the Lee--Oehme--Yang (LOY) effective Hamiltonian for the neutral kaon complex. Next, the properties of the exact effective Hamiltonian for this complex are discussed. Using the Khalfin Theorem we show that the diagonal matrix elements of the effective Hamiltonian governing the time evolution in the subspace of states of an unstable particle and its antiparticle need not be equal at for t > t_0 (t_0 is the instant of creation of the pair) when the total system under consideration is CPT invariant but CP noninvariant. The unusual consequence of this result is that, contrary to the properties of stable particles, the masses of the unstable particle "1" and its antiparticle "2" need not be equal for t >> t_0 in the case of preserved CPT and violated CP symmetries. We also show that there exists an approximation which is more accurate than the LOY, and which leads to an effective Hamiltonian whose diagonal matrix elements posses properties consistent with the conclusions for the exact effective Hamiltonian described above.