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A charm quark is one of the six types of fundamental particles called quarks that make up matter in the universe. Scientists study charm quarks because they help us understand the basic building blocks of nature and the forces that hold particles together.
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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/c as measured in 2022, and a charge of +2/3 e.
The existence of the charm quark was first predicted by James Bjorken and Sheldon Glashow in 1964, and in 1970, Glashow, John Iliopoulos, and Luciano Maiani showed how its existence would account for experimental and theoretical discrepancies. In 1974, its existence was confirmed through the independent discoveries of the J/psi meson at Brookhaven National Laboratory and the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. In the next few years, several other charmed particles, including the D meson and the charmed strange mesons, were found.