Chiral Quantum Textures

Chiral materials, in which the mirror reflection symmetry is broken, are ubiquitous in nature. Even the quantum vacuum of the standard model of particle physics is chiral [1], so that the behavior of the left-handed and right-handed elementary particles (quarks and leptons) are essentially different. One of the consequences is the chiral anomaly—the anomalous nonconservation of a chiral current, as first described by Adler and by Bell and Jackiw [2]. The chiral anomaly provides one explanation for the baryogenesis in the early Universe and the huge excess of matter over antimatter in the present Universe. A typical example of chiral materials is a cholestric liquid crystal, which consists of chiral molecules—objects that are not identical to their mirror image. Similarly, there are chiral magnets whose chirality is caused by the handedness in the arrangement of atoms.