In particle physics, a hadron is a composite subatomic particle made of two or more quarks held together by the strong interaction. They are analogous to molecules, which are held together by the electric force. Most of the mass of ordinary matter comes from two hadrons: the proton and the neutron, while most of the mass of the protons and neutrons is in turn due to the binding energy of their constituent quarks, due to the strong force.
In particle physics, a meson is a type of hadronic subatomic particle composed of an equal number of quarks and antiquarks, usually one of each, bound together by the strong interaction. Because mesons are composed of quark subparticles, they have a meaningful physical size, a diameter of roughly one femtometre (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 tenths of a nanosecond. Heavier mesons decay to lighter mesons and ultimately to stable electrons, neutrinos and photons.
A muon is an elementary particle similar to the electron, with an electric charge of −1 e and a spin of 1/2, but with a much greater mass. It is classified as a lepton. As with other leptons, the muon is not thought to be composed of any simpler particles.
In particle physics, a pion is any of three subatomic particles:
π0
,
π+
, and
π−
. Each pion consists of a quark and an antiquark and is therefore a meson. Pions are the lightest mesons and, more generally, the lightest hadrons. They are unstable, with the charged pions
π+
and
π−
decaying after a mean lifetime of 26.033 nanoseconds, and the neutral pion
π0
decaying after a much shorter lifetime of 85 attoseconds. Charged pions most often decay into muons and muon neutrinos, while neutral pions generally decay into gamma rays.
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, including the electron, muon, and tauon, and neutral leptons, better known as neutrinos. 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.
The charm quark, charmed quark, or c quark is an elementary particle found in composite subatomic particles called hadrons such as the J/psi meson and the charmed baryons created in particle accelerator collisions. Several bosons, including the W and Z bosons and the Higgs boson, can decay into charm quarks. All charm quarks carry charm, a quantum number. This second generation particle is the third-most-massive quark with a mass of 1.27±0.02 GeV/c2 as measured in 2022 and a charge of +2/3 e.
In theoretical physics, a chiral anomaly is the anomalous nonconservation of a chiral current. In everyday terms, it is equivalent to a sealed box that contained equal numbers of left and right-handed bolts, but when opened was found to have more left than right, or vice versa.
In nuclear physics and particle physics, isospin (I) is a quantum number related to the up- and down quark content of the particle. Isospin is also known as isobaric spin or isotopic spin. Isospin symmetry is a subset of the flavour symmetry seen more broadly in the interactions of baryons and mesons.
The relativistic Breit–Wigner distribution is a continuous probability distribution with the following probability density function,
In particle physics, neutral particle oscillation is the transmutation of a particle with zero electric charge into another neutral particle due to a change of a non-zero internal quantum number, via an interaction that does not conserve that quantum number. Neutral particle oscillations were first investigated in 1954 by Murray Gell-mann and Abraham Pais.
In particle physics, a shower is a cascade of secondary particles produced as the result of a high-energy particle interacting with dense matter. The incoming particle interacts, producing multiple new particles with lesser energy; each of these then interacts, in the same way, a process that continues until many thousands, millions, or even billions of low-energy particles are produced. These are then stopped in the matter and absorbed.
In particle physics, a rho meson is a short-lived hadronic particle that is an isospin triplet whose three states are denoted as
ρ+
,
ρ0
and
ρ−
. Along with pions and omega mesons, the rho meson carries the nuclear force within the atomic nucleus. After the pions and kaons, the rho mesons are the lightest strongly interacting particle, with a mass of 775.45±0.04 MeV for all three states.
The Delta baryons are a family of subatomic particle made of three up or down quarks, the same constituent quarks that make up the more familiar protons and neutrons.
CLEO was a general purpose particle detector at the Cornell Electron Storage Ring (CESR), and the name of the collaboration of physicists who operated the detector. The name CLEO is not an acronym; it is short for Cleopatra and was chosen to go with CESR. CESR was a particle accelerator designed to collide electrons and positrons at a center-of-mass energy of approximately 10 GeV. The energy of the accelerator was chosen before the first three bottom quark Upsilon resonances were discovered between 9.4 GeV and 10.4 GeV in 1977. The fourth Υ resonance, the Υ(4S), was slightly above the threshold for, and therefore ideal for the study of, B meson production.
The lambda baryons (Λ) 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 sigma baryons are a family of subatomic hadron particles which have two quarks from the first flavour generation, and a third quark from a higher flavour generation, in a combination where the wavefunction sign remains constant when any two quark flavours are swapped. They are thus baryons, with total isospin of 1, and can either be neutral or have an elementary charge of +2, +1, 0, or −1. They are closely related to the Lambda baryons, which differ only in the wavefunction's behaviour upon flavour exchange.
Resonance fluorescence is the process in which a two-level atom system interacts with the quantum electromagnetic field if the field is driven at a frequency near to the natural frequency of the atom.
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 "F mesons" prior to 1986.
This page is a glossary of terms in string theory, including related areas such as supergravity, supersymmetry, and high energy physics.
