Parity violating nuclear force by meson mixing

Abstract

We study a mechanism for parity violation in the two nucleon meson-exchange interaction by way of the mixing of mesons of opposite parities. This mixing arises from parity violating {ital W}{sup {plus minus}} and {ital Z} exchange between the {ital q{bar q}} pair in the meson. Numerically its effect turns out to be as important as vector meson exchange with a weak meson-nucleon vertex and may partly be used to model this vertex. The calculation is performed using both the standard Born approximation adding the amplitude phases by Watson's theorem and also using the exact correlated two-nucleon wave functions. The effect of correlations and form factors is found to be crucially important at intermediate energies.