Parity violation in the weak interaction
Violación de la paridad en la interacción débil
- Date
- 1956-1957 · confidence high
- Place
- National Bureau of Standards, Washington D.C., United States
- Credited to
- Chien-Shiung Wu; Tsung-Dao Lee; Chen Ning Yang
- People
- 👤 Chen Ning Yang1922–2025👤 Chien-Shiung Wu1912–1997👤 Tsung-Dao Lee1926–2024
- Field
- Cosmos & Earth
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What was discovered
Lee and Yang propose that parity might not be conserved in the weak interaction; Wu confirms it by observing that the electrons from the decay of polarised cobalt-60 are emitted preferentially in one direction. Nature distinguishes left from right.
1957 Nobel Prize awarded only to Lee and Yang; Wu's exclusion is one of the most cited cases of Nobel bias. Garwin, Lederman and Weinrich confirmed it with muons at Columbia days later.
What it led to
- V-A theory of the weak interaction
- Neutrino helicity (Goldhaber, 1958)
- Electroweak theory
- Search for CP violation
Built on
- Theta-tau puzzle
- Noether and Wigner symmetries
- Cryogenics and nuclear polarisation