Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

Given a fermion species, let's say an electron, you can have:

- left-handed electron

- right-handed electron

- left-handed anti-electron

- right-handed anti-electron

Going from particle to anti-particle, you swap charge and chirality (that's the CP transformation). So for instance a left-handed electron with negative electric charge becomes a right-handed anti-electron with positive electric charge.

For neutrinos, given that left-handed neutrinos have weak interactions, then so do right-handed anti-neutrinos.

It's no harder to detect anti-neutrinos than neutrinos. It's right-handed neutrinos and left-handed anti-neutrinos you'd have a problem with.

The CP violation article talks about probabilities because CP violation is not nearly as neat as P violation alone. Instead of the clear-cut "left-handed neutrinos (and therefore right-handed anti-neutrinos) only" of P, you get small differences.




Thanks! I think that was what I needed.

One last question: I was under the impression that the difference between a neutrino and an antineutrino was only chirality. What other property is there to distinguish a neutrino from an anti-neutrino?


Weak isospin. Look at the table in

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weak_isospin#Relation_with_chi...

(including the text in the last two rows).


Thank you for your knowledge, patience, and persistence in these answers.


That was an amazing discussion. Thank you both.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: