Over the past couple of decades, experiments measuring the parity-violating amplitude in the scattering of high energy longitudinally polarized electrons off fixed targets have made major advances, facililating the study of new aspects of the weak neutral force among quarks and leptons. Of particular significance are the ability to measure the contribution of virtual strange quarks to the charge and current distribution of nucleons and the ability to probe new physics at the TeV scale in a manner complementary to high energy colliders. In this talk, a historical perspective of the development of experimental techinques will be followed by a description of the primary physics questions that are being posed. The experimental program at various laboratories will be surveyed and the latest and upcoming experimental results will be discussed.

ANL Physics Division Colloquium Schedule