Helicity

Quick meaning: Helicity is a noun meaning The quality of being helical.

Meaning

The quality of being helical.

More Meanings

1. (physics, quantum mechanics) The quantized spin component of a moving particle along the direction of its motion.
2. (physics, fluid mechanics, electrodynamics) Any of certain measures of the extent to which vortex lines (in fluid flow) or field lines (in a magnetic or electromagnetic field) kink and twist or link and coil around one another.

Example Sentences

The conjecture made in Tsinober and Levich (1983) was that coherent structures should possess a significant coherent helicity.

The experiment was particularly ingenious because, as the neutrino hardly interacts with matter, some way of indirectly measuring its helicity had to be devised.

Now conservation of helicity is maintained: the writhe of the loops in the second panel is compensated for by the opposite sign of the twist helicity along the loops.

Interpreted in terms of helicity, this means that if the incident electron has positive helicity, then the outgoing electron has positive helicity for forward scattering, and negative helicity for backward scattering.

Word Forms

• helicities

Related Words

Related dictionary entries include heliocentricity, heterocercality, rotationality, ellipticalness, solenoidality, hermicity.

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