In particle physics, a baryon is a type of composite subatomic particle which contains an odd number of valence quarks. Baryons belong to the hadron family of particles; hadrons are composed of quarks. Baryons are also classified as fermions because they have half-integer spin.
In particle physics, a hadron is a subatomic composite particle made of two or more quarks held together by the strong force in a similar way as molecules are held together by the electromagnetic force. Most of the mass of ordinary matter comes from two hadrons: the proton and the neutron.
In particle physics, mesons are hadronic subatomic particles composed of an equal number of quarks and antiquarks, usually one of each, bound together by strong interactions. Because mesons are composed of quark subparticles, they have a meaningful physical size, a diameter of roughly one femtometer (1×10−15 m), which is about 0.6 times the size of a proton or neutron. All mesons are unstable, with the longest-lived lasting for only a few hundredths of a microsecond. Heavier mesons decay to lighter mesons and ultimately to stable electrons, neutrinos and photons.
In chemistry and physics, a nucleon is either a proton or a neutron, considered in its role as a component of an atomic nucleus. The number of nucleons in a nucleus defines an isotope's mass number.
A quark is a type of elementary particle and a fundamental constituent of matter. Quarks combine to form composite particles called hadrons, the most stable of which are protons and neutrons, the components of atomic nuclei. All commonly observable matter is composed of up quarks, down quarks and electrons. Owing to a phenomenon known as color confinement, quarks are never found in isolation; they can be found only within hadrons, which include baryons and mesons, or in quark–gluon plasmas. For this reason, much of what is known about quarks has been drawn from observations of hadrons.
In nuclear physics and particle physics, the weak interaction, which is also often called the weak force or weak nuclear force, is the mechanism of interaction between subatomic particles that is responsible for the radioactive decay of atoms. The weak interaction participates in nuclear fission, and the theory describing its behaviour and effects is sometimes called quantum flavourdynamics (QFD). However, the term QFD is rarely used, because the weak force is better understood by electroweak theory (EWT).
In particle physics, a lepton is an elementary particle of half-integer spin that does not undergo strong interactions. Two main classes of leptons exist: charged leptons, and neutral leptons. Charged leptons can combine with other particles to form various composite particles such as atoms and positronium, while neutrinos rarely interact with anything, and are consequently rarely observed. The best known of all leptons is the electron.
In physical sciences, subatomic particles are smaller than atoms. They can be composite particles, such as the neutron and proton; or elementary particles, which according to the standard model are not made of other particles. Particle physics and nuclear physics study these particles and how they interact. The concept of a subatomic particle was refined when experiments showed that light could behave like a stream of particles as well as exhibiting wave-like properties. This led to the concept of wave–particle duality to reflect that quantum-scale particles behave like both particles and waves. Another concept, the uncertainty principle, states that some of their properties taken together, such as their simultaneous position and momentum, cannot be measured exactly. The wave–particle duality has been shown to apply not only to photons but to more massive particles as well.
In particle physics, annihilation is the process that occurs when a subatomic particle collides with its respective antiparticle to produce other particles, such as an electron colliding with a positron to produce two photons. The total energy and momentum of the initial pair are conserved in the process and distributed among a set of other particles in the final state. Antiparticles have exactly opposite additive quantum numbers from particles, so the sums of all quantum numbers of such an original pair are zero. Hence, any set of particles may be produced whose total quantum numbers are also zero as long as conservation of energy and conservation of momentum are obeyed.
In particle physics, the baryon number is a strictly conserved additive quantum number of a system. It is defined as
In particle physics, the W and Z bosons are vector bosons that are together known as the weak bosons or more generally as the intermediate vector bosons. These elementary particles mediate the weak interaction; the respective symbols are
W+
,
W−
, and
Z0
. The
W±
bosons have either a positive or negative electric charge of 1 elementary charge and are each other's antiparticles. The
Z0
boson is electrically neutral and is its own antiparticle. The three particles have a spin of 1. The
W±
bosons have a magnetic moment, but the
Z0
has none. All three of these particles are very short-lived, with a half-life of about 3×10−25 s. Their experimental discovery was pivotal in establishing what is now called the Standard Model of particle physics.
Strangeness (S) is introduced to refine the understanding of the quark structure of matter. It has unraveled a new property of particles, a quantum number describing a large group of strongly interacting strange particles. Strangeness is an excited state of matter and its decay is governed by CKM mixing. The strangeness of a particle is defined as:
In particle physics, the hyperchargeY of a particle is a quantum number conserved under the strong interaction. The concept of hypercharge provides a single charge operator that accounts for properties of isospin, electric charge, and flavour. The hypercharge is useful to classify hadrons; the similarly named weak hypercharge has an analogous role in the electroweak interaction.
In physics, bottomness or beauty is a flavour quantum number reflecting the difference between the number of bottom antiquarks and the number of bottom quarks that are present in a particle:
Topness, a flavour quantum number, represents the difference between the number of top quarks (t) and number of top antiquarks that are present in a particle:
In particle physics, flavour or flavor refers to the species of an elementary particle. The Standard Model counts six flavours of quarks and six flavours of leptons. They are conventionally parameterized with flavour quantum numbers that are assigned to all subatomic particles. They can also be described by some of the family symmetries proposed for the quark-lepton generations.
Leptoquarks (LQs) are hypothetical particles that would interact with quarks and leptons. Leptoquarks are color-triplet bosons that carry both lepton and baryon numbers. Their other quantum numbers, like spin, (fractional) electric charge and weak isospin vary among theories. Leptoquarks are encountered in various extensions of the Standard Model, such as technicolor theories, theories of quark-lepton unification (e.g., Pati–Salam model), or GUTs based on SU(5), SO(10), E6, etc. Leptoquarks are currently searched for in experiments ATLAS and CMS at the Large Hadron Collider in CERN.
The Lambda baryons are a family of subatomic hadron particles containing one up quark, one down quark, and a third quark from a higher flavour generation, in a combination where the quantum wave function changes sign upon the flavour of any two quarks being swapped. They are thus baryons, with total isospin of 0, and have either neutral electric charge or the elementary charge +1.
The D mesons are the lightest particle containing charm quarks. They are often studied to gain knowledge on the weak interaction. The strange D mesons (Ds) were called the "F mesons" prior to 1986.
