Manifest Left-Right Symmetry and its Experimental Consequences

Abstract

We consider the possibility that weak interactions—in common with all other known interactions—do in fact enjoy a left-right symmetry manifest in the Hamiltonian, and that parity nonconservation stems from the spontaneous breakdown of this symmetry. We show that this picture is experimentally distinguishable from the conventional one in which parity nonconservation stems from the Hamiltonian. The implications of currently available experimental results are discussed and the need for new and decisive experiments is underlined.