Electroweak constraints from atomic parity violation and neutrino scattering

Precision electroweak physics can provide fertile ground for uncovering new physics beyond the standard model (SM). One area in which new physics can appear is in so-called oblique corrections,'' i.e., next-to-leading-order expansions of bosonic propagators corresponding to vacuum polarization. One may parametrize their effects in terms of quantities S and T that discriminate between conservation and nonconservation of isospin. This provides a means of comparing the relative contributions of precision electroweak experiments to constraints on new physics. Given the prevalence of strongly T-sensitive experiments, there is an acute need for further constraints on S, such as provided by atomic parity-violating experiments on heavy atoms. We evaluate constraints on S arising from recently improved calculations in the Cs atom. We show that the top quark mass m(t) provides stringent constraints on S within the context of the SM. We also consider the potential contributions of next-generation neutrino scattering experiments to improved (S, T) constraints.