Chirality: A Scientific Leitmotif
History and Philosophy of Physics
2022-11-08 v2 High Energy Physics - Phenomenology
Abstract
Handedness, or chirality, has been a continuing source of inspiration across a wide range of scientific problems. After a quick review of some important, instructive historical examples, I present three contemporary case studies involving sophisticated applications of chirality at the frontier of present-day science in the measurement of the muon magnetic moment, in topological physics, and in exploring the "chirality" of time. Finally, I briefly discuss chirality as a source of fertile questions.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2112.06927,
title = {Chirality: A Scientific Leitmotif},
author = {Frank Wilczek},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2112.06927},
year = {2022}
}
Comments
Keynote talk at Nobel Symposium 167, "Chiral Matter", Stockholm June 2021. To be published in the proceedings. v2: Minor typos corrected, expanded discussion of T violation in biology