Flavour Physics and CP Violation

The starting point of these lectures is an introduction to the weak interactions of quarks and the Standard-Model description of CP violation, where the central role is played by the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa matrix and the corresponding unitarity triangles. Since the B-meson system will govern the stage of (quark) flavour physics and CP violation in this decade, it will be our main focus. We shall classify B-meson decays, introduce the theoretical tools to deal with them, investigate the requirements for non-vanishing CP-violating asymmetries, and discuss the main strategies to explore CP violation and the preferred avenues for physics beyond the Standard Model to enter. This formalism is then applied to discuss the status of important B-factory benchmark modes, where we focus on puzzling patterns in the data that may indicate new-physics effects, as well as the prospects for B-decay studies at the LHC.