Sunday, 15 November 2020

quantum mechanics - Why is it claimed that the spin of ${}^{60} text{Co}$ is reversed under parity in Wu's experiment?


Lee and Yang proposed Wu’s experiment to check whether parity is conserved during beta decay. According to Wikipedia, the experiment works because spin is reversed under a parity transformation.


However, it seems like spin shouldn’t be reversed under parity, because $$\vec{L}=\vec{r}\times \vec{p} = -(\vec{r})\times (-\vec{p}).$$ Why does Wikipedia, and some textbooks such as Griffiths, claim the spin is reversed under parity?




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