The neutrino's elusive helicity reversal
- Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, New York (United States)
The 1957 discovery of parity violation in the weak interactions swiftly brought attention to two concepts that have become ubiquitous in particle physics: Helicity is the projection of a particle's spin along its direction of motion, and chirality is the projection of a four-component Dirac spinor onto the sum (positive chirality) or difference (negative chirality) of what in Paul Dirac's original notation are the ''large'' and ''small'' components of the wavefunction for spin-1/2 particles (see box 1). Projection onto eigenstates of chirality is central to the standard model of the electroweak interactions. That's because most weak interactions involve only the negative-chirality components of the interacting leptons and quarks.
- OSTI ID:
- 22038549
- Journal Information:
- Physics Today, Journal Name: Physics Today Journal Issue: 5 Vol. 64; ISSN 0031-9228; ISSN PHTOAD
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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