Polarized electron-nucleus scattering and parity-violating neutral-current interactions

The polarization asymmetry in the scattering of polarized electrons from nuclei coming from the interference between electromagnetic interactions and parity-violating neutral-current interactions is discussed. It is shown how measurements of this asymmetry in various elastic and inelastic electron-nucleus scatterings can be used to determine specific spin and isospin terms in the hadronic neutral current. A specially interesting case would be a measurement in a $0^{+}$ →$0^{-}$ excitation, in which the asymmetry is 100 times larger than usual because the electromagnetic matrix element involves two-photon exchange.