- #1
Lucretius
- 152
- 0
I just finished reading a book, The Quantum World, but have gone back and looked at some interesting and confusing parts again. One involving P-violation I cannot understand for the life of me and was hoping someone would help me be able to.
The author discussed an experiment by Leon Lederman and others, where they produced positive pion particles in a cyclotron. This particle subsequently decayed into a positive muon and it's neutrino form. The muon is experimentally shown to always be single-handed. The neutrino is of the same left-handedness as the muon.
This next part is what confuses me. He says that "if parity were conserved, half of the neutrinos created would be left-handed and half would be right-handed. Experiment indicates that they all were single-handed (meaniung that parity conservation is as totally violated as it could be!)
I don't get it. If the muon is experimentally shown to be single-handed, why is it a problem that it's neutrino is? Am I reading this wrong? Can the positive muon be both left and right-handed, but the neutrino is only left-handed, and that's the P-violation? I'd like to understand this experiment and it's conclusion of P-violation, but I simply don't with the wording given.
The author discussed an experiment by Leon Lederman and others, where they produced positive pion particles in a cyclotron. This particle subsequently decayed into a positive muon and it's neutrino form. The muon is experimentally shown to always be single-handed. The neutrino is of the same left-handedness as the muon.
This next part is what confuses me. He says that "if parity were conserved, half of the neutrinos created would be left-handed and half would be right-handed. Experiment indicates that they all were single-handed (meaniung that parity conservation is as totally violated as it could be!)
I don't get it. If the muon is experimentally shown to be single-handed, why is it a problem that it's neutrino is? Am I reading this wrong? Can the positive muon be both left and right-handed, but the neutrino is only left-handed, and that's the P-violation? I'd like to understand this experiment and it's conclusion of P-violation, but I simply don't with the wording given.