PionIn particle physics, a pion (or a pi meson, denoted with the Greek letter pi: _Pion) is any of three subatomic particles: _Pion0, _Pion+, and _Pion-. 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 _Pion+ and _Pion- decaying after a mean lifetime of 26.033 nanoseconds (2.6033e-8 seconds), and the neutral pion _Pion0 decaying after a much shorter lifetime of 85 attoseconds (8.
KaonIn particle physics, a kaon (ˈkeɪ.ɒn), also called a K meson and denoted _Kaon, is any of a group of four mesons distinguished by a quantum number called strangeness. In the quark model they are understood to be bound states of a strange quark (or antiquark) and an up or down antiquark (or quark). Kaons have proved to be a copious source of information on the nature of fundamental interactions since their discovery in cosmic rays in 1947.
Eta and eta prime mesonsThe eta (_eta) and eta prime meson (_eta prime) are isosinglet mesons made of a mixture of up, down and strange quarks and their antiquarks. The charmed eta meson (_charmed eta) and bottom eta meson (_bottom eta) are similar forms of quarkonium; they have the same spin and parity as the (light) _eta defined, but are made of charm quarks and bottom quarks respectively. The top quark is too heavy to form a similar meson, due to its very fast decay. The eta was discovered in pion–nucleon collisions at the Bevatron in 1961 by Aihud Pevsner et al.
Center-of-momentum frameIn physics, the center-of-momentum frame (COM frame), also known as zero-momentum frame, is the inertial frame in which the total momentum of the system vanishes. It is unique up to velocity, but not origin. The center of momentum of a system is not a location, but a collection of relative momenta/velocities: a reference frame. Thus "center of momentum" is a short for "center-of-momentum ". A special case of the center-of-momentum frame is the center-of-mass frame: an inertial frame in which the center of mass (which is a single point) remains at the origin.
Belle experimentThe Belle experiment was a particle physics experiment conducted by the Belle Collaboration, an international collaboration of more than 400 physicists and engineers, at the High Energy Accelerator Research Organisation (KEK) in Tsukuba, Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan. The experiment ran from 1999 to 2010. The Belle detector was located at the collision point of the asymmetric-energy electron–positron collider, KEKB.
MesonIn particle physics, a meson (ˈmiːzɒn,_ˈmɛzɒn) 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.
Tau (particle)The tau (τ), also called the tau lepton, tau particle, tauon or tau electron, is an elementary particle similar to the electron, with negative electric charge and a spin of 1/2. Like the electron, the muon, and the three neutrinos, the tau is a lepton, and like all elementary particles with half-integer spin, the tau has a corresponding antiparticle of opposite charge but equal mass and spin. In the tau's case, this is the "antitau" (also called the positive tau). Tau particles are denoted by the symbol _Tau- and the antitaus by _Tau+.
HadronIn particle physics, a hadron (ˈhædrɒn; hadrós; "stout, thick") is a composite subatomic particle made of two or more quarks held together by the strong interaction. They are analogous to molecules that 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.
Energy–momentum relationIn physics, the energy–momentum relation, or relativistic dispersion relation, is the relativistic equation relating total energy (which is also called relativistic energy) to invariant mass (which is also called rest mass) and momentum. It is the extension of mass–energy equivalence for bodies or systems with non-zero momentum. It can be written as the following equation: This equation holds for a body or system, such as one or more particles, with total energy E, invariant mass m0, and momentum of magnitude p; the constant c is the speed of light.
Mass in special relativityThe word "mass" has two meanings in special relativity: invariant mass (also called rest mass) is an invariant quantity which is the same for all observers in all reference frames, while the relativistic mass is dependent on the velocity of the observer. According to the concept of mass–energy equivalence, invariant mass is equivalent to rest energy, while relativistic mass is equivalent to relativistic energy (also called total energy).
Quark modelIn particle physics, the quark model is a classification scheme for hadrons in terms of their valence quarks—the quarks and antiquarks which give rise to the quantum numbers of the hadrons. The quark model underlies "flavor SU(3)", or the Eightfold Way, the successful classification scheme organizing the large number of lighter hadrons that were being discovered starting in the 1950s and continuing through the 1960s. It received experimental verification beginning in the late 1960s and is a valid effective classification of them to date.
Pseudoscalar mesonIn high-energy physics, a pseudoscalar meson is a meson with total spin 0 and odd parity (usually notated as J^P = 0^− ). Pseudoscalar mesons are commonly seen in proton-proton scattering and proton-antiproton annihilation, and include the pion (π), kaon (K), eta (η), and eta prime () particles, whose masses are known with great precision. Among all of the mesons known to exist, in some sense, the pseudoscalars are the most well studied and understood.
Eightfold way (physics)In physics, the eightfold way is an organizational scheme for a class of subatomic particles known as hadrons that led to the development of the quark model. Working alone, both the American physicist Murray Gell-Mann and the Israeli physicist Yuval Ne'eman proposed the idea in 1961. The name comes from Gell-Mann's (1961) paper and is an allusion to the Noble Eightfold Path of Buddhism. By 1947, physicists believed that they had a good understanding of what the smallest bits of matter were.
J/psi mesonThe _J/psi (J/psi) meson ˈdʒeɪ_ˈsaɪ_ˈmiːzɒn is a subatomic particle, a flavor-neutral meson consisting of a charm quark and a charm antiquark. Mesons formed by a bound state of a charm quark and a charm anti-quark are generally known as "charmonium" or psions. The _J/Psi is the most common form of charmonium, due to its spin of 1 and its low rest mass. The _J/Psi has a rest mass of 3.0969GeV/c2, just above that of the _charmed eta (2.9836GeV/c2), and a mean lifetime of 7.2e-21s.
Angular momentum of lightThe angular momentum of light is a vector quantity that expresses the amount of dynamical rotation present in the electromagnetic field of the light. While traveling approximately in a straight line, a beam of light can also be rotating (or "spinning, or "twisting) around its own axis. This rotation, while not visible to the naked eye, can be revealed by the interaction of the light beam with matter. There are two distinct forms of rotation of a light beam, one involving its polarization and the other its wavefront shape.
Invariant massThe invariant mass, rest mass, intrinsic mass, proper mass, or in the case of bound systems simply mass, is the portion of the total mass of an object or system of objects that is independent of the overall motion of the system. More precisely, it is a characteristic of the system's total energy and momentum that is the same in all frames of reference related by Lorentz transformations. If a center-of-momentum frame exists for the system, then the invariant mass of a system is equal to its total mass in that "rest frame".
Rho mesonIn particle physics, a rho meson is a short-lived hadronic particle that is an isospin triplet whose three states are denoted as _Rho+, _Rho0 and _Rho-. 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 775.45MeV for all three states. The rho mesons have a very short lifetime and their decay width is about 145MeV with the peculiar feature that the decay widths are not described by a Breit–Wigner form.
Deep inelastic scatteringIn particle physics, deep inelastic scattering is the name given to a process used to probe the insides of hadrons (particularly the baryons, such as protons and neutrons), using electrons, muons and neutrinos. It was first attempted in the 1960s and 1970s and provided the first convincing evidence of the reality of quarks, which up until that point had been considered by many to be a purely mathematical phenomenon. It is an extension of Rutherford scattering to much higher energies of the scattering particle and thus to much finer resolution of the components of the nuclei.
LHCb experimentThe LHCb (Large Hadron Collider beauty) experiment is a particle physics detector experiment collecting data at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. LHCb is a specialized b-physics experiment, designed primarily to measure the parameters of CP violation in the interactions of b-hadrons (heavy particles containing a bottom quark). Such studies can help to explain the matter-antimatter asymmetry of the Universe. The detector is also able to perform measurements of production cross sections, exotic hadron spectroscopy, charm physics and electroweak physics in the forward region.
Angular momentumIn physics, angular momentum (sometimes called moment of momentum or rotational momentum) is the rotational analog of linear momentum. It is an important physical quantity because it is a conserved quantity – the total angular momentum of a closed system remains constant. Angular momentum has both a direction and a magnitude, and both are conserved. Bicycles and motorcycles, flying discs, rifled bullets, and gyroscopes owe their useful properties to conservation of angular momentum.
