Spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking by hydromagnetic buoyancy.

Evidence for the parity-breaking nature of the magnetic buoyancy instability in a stably stratified gas is reported. In the absence of rotation, no helicity is produced, but the nonhelical state is found to be unstable to small helical perturbations during the development of the instability. The parity-breaking nature of this magnetohydrodynamic instability appears to be the first of its kind and has properties similar to those in chiral symmetry breaking in biochemistry. Applications to the production of mean fields in galaxy clusters are discussed.