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Particle physics

Quarks are not ambidextrous

Nature volume 506, pages 43–44 (2014)Cite this article

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By separately scattering right- and left-handed electrons off quarks in a deuterium target, researchers have improved, by about a factor of five, on a classic result of mirror-symmetry breaking from 35 years ago. See Letter p.67

Symmetry makes the world go round. Scientific theories of the physics of elementary particles stem from simple symmetries that dictate the fundamental forces governing our Universe. Sometimes symmetries are broken, and that can have profound implications. An important case is the reflection, or right–left mirror, symmetry known as parity. On page 67 of this issue, an international team at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility in Newport News, Virginia, reports1 measurements of parity-symmetry breaking that confirm expectations and that unambiguously separate the electron and (much smaller) quark parity-violating interactions. The small quark parity violation can be used as a sensitive probe of new interactions or to measure subtle nuclear effects.

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  1. William J. Marciano is at the Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, New York 11973, USA.,

    William J. Marciano

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  1. William J. Marciano
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Correspondence to William J. Marciano.

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Marciano, W. Quarks are not ambidextrous. Nature 506, 43–44 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/506043a

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