Concept
W and Z bosons
Related concepts (29)
Truly neutral particle
In particle physics, a truly neutral particle is a subatomic particle that is its own antiparticle. In other words, it remains itself under the charge conjugation, which replaces particles with their corresponding antiparticles. All charges of a truly neutral particle must be equal to zero. This requires particles to not only be electrically neutral, but also requires that all of their other charges (such as the colour charge) be neutral.
Flavor-changing neutral current
In particle physics, flavor-changing neutral currents or flavour-changing neutral currents (FCNCs) are hypothetical interactions that change the flavor of a fermion without altering its electric charge. If they occur in nature (as reflected by Lagrangian interaction terms), these processes may induce phenomena that have not yet been observed in experiment. Flavor-changing neutral currents may occur in the Standard Model beyond the tree level, but they are highly suppressed by the GIM mechanism.
Gargamelle
Gargamelle was a heavy liquid bubble chamber detector in operation at CERN between 1970 and 1979. It was designed to detect neutrinos and antineutrinos, which were produced with a beam from the Proton Synchrotron (PS) between 1970 and 1976, before the detector was moved to the Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS). In 1979 an irreparable crack was discovered in the bubble chamber, and the detector was decommissioned. It is currently part of the "Microcosm" exhibition at CERN, open to the public.
Unitarity gauge
In theoretical physics, the unitarity gauge or unitary gauge is a particular choice of a gauge fixing in a gauge theory with a spontaneous symmetry breaking. In this gauge, the scalar fields responsible for the Higgs mechanism are transformed into a basis in which their Goldstone boson components are set to zero. In other words, the unitarity gauge makes the manifest number of scalar degrees of freedom minimal. The gauge was introduced to particle physics by Steven Weinberg in the context of the electroweak theory.
J/psi meson
The _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.
Weak charge
In nuclear physics and atomic physics, weak charge refers to the Standard Model weak interaction coupling of a particle to the Z boson. For example, for any given nuclear isotope, the total weak charge is approximately −0.99 per neutron, and +0.07 per proton. It also shows an effect of parity violation during electron scattering. This same term is sometimes also used to refer to other, distinct quantities, such as weak isospin, weak hypercharge, or the vector coupling of a fermion to the Z boson (i.e.
Wu experiment
The Wu experiment was a particle and nuclear physics experiment conducted in 1956 by the Chinese American physicist Chien-Shiung Wu in collaboration with the Low Temperature Group of the US National Bureau of Standards. The experiment's purpose was to establish whether or not conservation of parity (P-conservation), which was previously established in the electromagnetic and strong interactions, also applied to weak interactions. If P-conservation were true, a mirrored version of the world (where left is right and right is left) would behave as the mirror image of the current world.
Charm (quantum number)
Charm (symbol C) is a flavour quantum number representing the difference between the number of charm quarks (_charm quark) and charm antiquarks (_Charm antiquark) that are present in a particle: By convention, the sign of flavour quantum numbers agree with the sign of the electric charge carried by the quarks of corresponding flavour. The charm quark, which carries an electric charge (Q) of +, therefore carries a charm of +1. The charm antiquarks have the opposite charge (Q = −), and flavour quantum numbers (C = −1).
Self-energy
In quantum field theory, the energy that a particle has as a result of changes that it causes in its environment defines self-energy , and represents the contribution to the particle's energy, or effective mass, due to interactions between the particle and its environment. In electrostatics, the energy required to assemble the charge distribution takes the form of self-energy by bringing in the constituent charges from infinity, where the electric force goes to zero.