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The Goldhaber experiment inferred neutrino helicity from the circular polarization of a nuclear gamma ray. A spin-zero metastable europium-152 nucleus captures an inner-shell electron, producing a spin-one excited samarium-152 daughter and an electron neutrino; the daughter promptly emits a roughly $960\mathrm{keV}$ gamma ray to its spin-zero ground state. For a nearly stationary initial atom, the daughter recoils opposite the neutrino. Selecting photons emitted along that recoil relates the daughter spin projection, the photon helicity and the neutrino helicity.

The selection used resonant absorption and scattering in samarium. Nuclear recoil normally shifts an emitted gamma ray below the absorption resonance; the daughter recoil from electron capture supplies a compensating forward Doppler shift. Resonant scattering therefore preferentially selects forward photons, fixing their direction relative to the otherwise invisible neutrino. A samarium scatterer and scintillation counting identify this resonant component. Transmission through magnetized iron, whose Compton scattering depends on the relative electron and photon spins, then analyzes the circular polarization. Reversing the magnetization reverses the analyzing asymmetry and helps control instrumental offsets.

The selected photon and neutrino normalized helicities have the same sign: their momenta are opposite, while the daughter angular-momentum accounting gives opposite spin projections along the recoil axis. The observed negative photon helicity therefore establishes predominantly left-helicity neutrinos, consistent with the V-A interaction. It measures a helicity correlation, not a tiny neutrino mass or a literal observation of the neutral particle's trajectory.^[ref]

An observable that reverses sign under parity but has a nonzero expectation in a suitably prepared experiment tests parity violation. A polar momentum reverses, whereas an axial spin angular momentum does not. Thus $\mathbf{J}\cdot \mathbf{p}$ and helicity are parity-odd; an apparatus asymmetry must be separated from a physical asymmetry by reversing the preparation or analyser.

In the Wu experiment, polarized cobalt-60 nuclei preferentially emit beta decay electrons in one direction relative to the nuclear spin angular momentum. The distribution contains $A\mathbf{P}\cdot {\mathbf{p}}_e/E_e$; its sign changes under spatial inversion. Reversing the nuclear polarization reverses the observed asymmetry.^[ref]

In the Goldhaber experiment, the sign of the circular polarization of selected gamma rays determines the sign of the neutrino helicity. A preference for negative helicity is parity-odd because spatial inversion would produce the positive-helicity state. This provides a different experimental observable from the electron angular distribution.

A stable samarium isotope used as the nuclear absorber in the Goldhaber experiment.