meson
Sign in to saveIn 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 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.
AI overview
A meson is a tiny subatomic particle made of a quark and an antiquark held together by a strong force, with a size roughly 0.6 times that of a proton. Mesons are important to understanding particle physics because they're unstable and decay into other particles, helping scientists trace the fundamental building blocks of matter and energy.
AI-generated from the Wikipedia summary — may contain errors.
Key facts
- Particle.name
- Mesons
- Particle.image
- 200px
- Particle.caption
- Mesons of spin 0 form a nonet
- Particle.num_types
- ~140 (list)
- Particle.composition
- composite: quarks and antiquarks
- Particle.statistics
- bosonic
- Particle.group
- hadron
- Particle.interaction
- strong, weak, electromagnetic and gravitational
- Particle.theorized
- Hideki Yukawa (1935)
- Particle.discovered
- 1947
- Particle.mass
- from 134.9 MeV/c2 ()to 9.460 GeV/c2 ()
- Particle.electric_charge
- −1 e, 0 e, +1 e
Article
26 sectionsContents
- History
- Overview
- Spin, orbital angular momentum, and total angular momentum
- P-parity
- C-parity
- G-parity
- Isospin and charge
- Original isospin model
- Replacement by the quark model
- Flavour quantum numbers
- Classification
- Types of meson
- Nomenclature
- Flavourless mesons
- Flavoured mesons
- Exotic mesons
- List
- Pseudoscalar mesons
- Vector mesons
- Notes on neutral kaons
- See also
- Footnotes
- References
- General Sources
- External links
- Further reading
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 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.
Outside the nucleus, mesons appear in nature only as short-lived products of very high-energy collisions between particles made of quarks, such as cosmic rays (high-energy protons and neutrons) and baryonic matter. Mesons are routinely produced artificially in cyclotrons or other particle accelerators in the collisions of protons, antiprotons, or other particles.