arXiv:hep-th/0207165v2 17 Apr 2003 1 hep-th/0207165 Parity violation and torsion: a study in four and higher dimensions Biswarup Mukhopadhyaya 1 Harish-Chandra Research Institute, Chhatnag Road, Jhusi, Allahabad - 211 019, India Somasri Sen 2 CAAUL, Departamento de Fisica da FCUL, Campo Grande, 1749-016 Lisboa, Portugal Soumitra SenGupta 3 Department of Theoretical Physics, Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science, Calcutta - 700 032, India Saurabh Sur 4 Department of Physics, Jadavpur University, Calcutta - 700 032, India PACS Nos.: 04.20.Cv, 11.30.Er, 11.25.Mj Abstract The possibility of parity violation in a gravitational theory with torsion is extensively explored in four and higher dimensions. In the former case, we have listed our conclusions on when and whether parity ceases to be conserved, with both two-and three-index anti- symmetry of the torsion field. In the latter, the bulk spacetime is assumed to have torsion, and the survival of parity-violating terms in the four dimensional effective action is stud- ied, using the compactification schemes proposed by Arkani-Hamed-Dimopoulos-Dvali and Randall-Sundrum. An interesting conclusion is that the torsion-axion duality arising in a stringy scenario via the second rank antisymmetric Kalb-Ramond field leads to conserva- tion of parity in the gravity sector in any dimension. However, parity-violating interactions do appear for spin 1/2 fermions in such theories, which can have crucial phenomenological implications. 1 E-mail: biswarup@mri.ernet.in 2 E-mail: somasri@cosmo.fis.fc.ul.pt 3 E-mail: tpssg@mahendra.iacs.res.in 4 E-mail: saurabh@juphys.ernet.in