Maskawa

Maskawa is a Japanese surname. The most prominent bearer in scientific literature is Toshihide Maskawa, a Japanese theoretical physicist known for his work on CP violation in the Standard Model of particle physics.

Maskawa, together with Makoto Kobayashi, formulated what is often called the Kobayashi–Maskawa mechanism. Their work extended the quark mixing framework to three generations, introducing a complex phase in the quark mixing matrix that allows CP violation in weak interactions. The resulting matrix, commonly referred to as the CKM (or KM) matrix, describes how quark flavors change through weak decays and incorporates the necessity of three quark families to accommodate observed CP-violating phenomena.

The Kobayashi–Maskawa theory provided a crucial component of the Standard Model’s explanation for CP violation and has guided extensive experimental investigations, particularly in B-meson decays and other flavor-changing processes. In recognition of this contribution, Makoto Kobayashi and Toshihide Maskawa were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2008.

Beyond this, Maskawa remains primarily noted in scientific contexts for his role in developing the mechanism that links quark mixing to CP violation. The surname Maskawa may appear in Japanese contexts as a family name and is not associated with widely known entities outside this scientific reference.