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The helicity of a particle is positive (" right-handed") if the direction of its spin is the same as the direction of its motion and negative ("left-handed") if opposite. Helicity is conserved. [1] That is, the helicity commutes with the Hamiltonian, and thus, in the absence of external forces, is time-invariant. It is also rotationally ...
Mathematically, helicity is the sign of the projection of the spin vector onto the momentum vector: "left" is negative, "right" is positive. The chirality of a particle is more abstract: It is determined by whether the particle transforms in a right- or left-handed representation of the Poincaré group. [a]
Chirality of a massive particle is not a constant of motion; helicity is, but the chirality operator does not share eigenstates with the helicity operator. Free neutrinos propagate as mixtures of left- and right-handed helicity states, with mixing amplitudes on the order of m ν / E . This does not significantly affect the experiments ...
The normalization of the single-particle states must be chosen carefully, however, to ensure that M is a relativistic invariant. Non-relativistic single particle states are labeled by the momentum k, and they are chosen to have the same norm at every value of k. This is because the nonrelativistic unit operator on single particle states is:
In particular for a massless particle the helicity is the same as the chirality while for an antiparticle they have opposite sign. The handedness in both chirality and helicity relate to the rotation of a particle while it proceeds in linear motion with reference to the human hands. The thumb of the hand points towards the direction of linear ...
Helicity is a pseudo-scalar quantity: it changes sign under change from a right-handed to a left-handed frame of reference; it can be considered as a measure of the handedness (or chirality) of the flow. Helicity is one of the four known integral invariants of the Euler equations; the other three are energy, momentum and angular momentum.
The rate at which pions decay is a prominent quantity in many sub-fields of particle physics, such as chiral perturbation theory. This rate is parametrized by the pion decay constant ( f π ), related to the wave function overlap of the quark and antiquark, which is about 130 MeV .
In the Standard Model, using quantum field theory it is conventional to use the helicity basis to simplify calculations (of cross sections, for example). In this basis, the spin is quantized along the axis in the direction of motion of the particle.