Analysis of parity violation in chiral molecules

In order to guide the experimental search for parity violation in molecular systems, in part motivated by the possible link to biomolecular homochirality, we present a detailed analysis in a relativistic framework of the mechanism behind the tiny energy difference between enantiomers induced by the weak force. A decomposition of the molecular expectation value into atomic contributions reveals that the effect can be thought of as arising from a specific mixing of valence