Large Parity Violation Effects in the Vibrational Spectrum of Organometallic Compounds.

The understanding of chirality is central to molecular sciences. Scientists define chirality as exhibited by systems that exist in two distinct enantiomeric states that are interconverted by the parity operation or space inversion, but not by time reversal combined with any proper spatial rotation. Conservation of parity symmetry manifests itself in enantiomers having exactly the same chemical and physical properties in an achiral medium. According to the standard model, the neutral weak electron-nucleon current leads to parity violation and breakdown of mirror image symmetry or parity nonconservation (PNC) in chiral molecules, thus causing a small energy difference PNC between enantiomers resulting in small differences in spectroscopic properties.