Neutral particle oscillationIn 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. For example, a neutron cannot transmute into an antineutron as that would violate the conservation of baryon number.
Bottom quarkThe bottom quark or b quark, also known as the beauty quark, is a third-generation heavy quark with a charge of −1/3 e. All quarks are described in a similar way by electroweak and quantum chromodynamics, but the bottom quark has exceptionally low rates of transition to lower-mass quarks. The bottom quark is also notable because it is a product in almost all top quark decays, and is a frequent decay product of the Higgs boson. The bottom quark was first described theoretically in 1973 by physicists Makoto Kobayashi and Toshihide Maskawa to explain CP violation.
Weak interactionIn nuclear physics and particle physics, the weak interaction, which is also often called the weak force or weak nuclear force, is one of the four known fundamental interactions, with the others being electromagnetism, the strong interaction, and gravitation. It is the mechanism of interaction between subatomic particles that is responsible for the radioactive decay of atoms: The weak interaction participates in nuclear fission and nuclear fusion.
B mesonIn particle physics, B mesons are mesons composed of a bottom antiquark and either an up (_B+), down (_B0), strange (_Strange B0) or charm quark (_Charmed B+). The combination of a bottom antiquark and a top quark is not thought to be possible because of the top quark's short lifetime. The combination of a bottom antiquark and a bottom quark is not a B meson, but rather bottomonium, which is something else entirely. Each B meson has an antiparticle that is composed of a bottom quark and an up (_B-), down (_AntiB0), strange (_Strange antiB0) or charm (_Charmed b-) antiquark respectively.
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.
Split supersymmetryIn particle physics, split supersymmetry is a proposal for physics beyond the Standard Model. It was proposed separately in three papers. The first by James Wells in June 2003 in a more modest form that mildly relaxed the assumption about naturalness in the Higgs potential. In May 2004 Nima Arkani-Hamed and Savas Dimopoulos argued that naturalness in the Higgs sector may not be an accurate guide to propose new physics beyond the Standard Model and argued that supersymmetry may be realized in a different fashion that preserved gauge coupling unification and has a dark matter candidate.
Mathematical formulation of the Standard ModelThis article describes the mathematics of the Standard Model of particle physics, a gauge quantum field theory containing the internal symmetries of the unitary product group SU(3) × SU(2) × U(1). The theory is commonly viewed as describing the fundamental set of particles – the leptons, quarks, gauge bosons and the Higgs boson. The Standard Model is renormalizable and mathematically self-consistent, however despite having huge and continued successes in providing experimental predictions it does leave some unexplained phenomena.
Charm quarkThe charm quark, charmed quark, or c quark is an elementary particle of the second generation. It is the third-most massive quark, with a mass of 1.27GeV/c2 (as measured in 2022) and a charge of +2/3 e. It carries charm, a quantum number. Charm quarks are found in various hadrons, such as the J/psi meson and the charmed baryons. There are also several bosons, including the W and Z bosons and the Higgs boson, that can decay into charm quarks.
Top quarkThe top quark, sometimes also referred to as the truth quark, (symbol: t) is the most massive of all observed elementary particles. It derives its mass from its coupling to the Higgs Boson. This coupling is very close to unity; in the Standard Model of particle physics, it is the largest (strongest) coupling at the scale of the weak interactions and above. The top quark was discovered in 1995 by the CDF and DØ experiments at Fermilab.
Quark–gluon plasmaQuark–gluon plasma (or QGP and quark soup) is an interacting localized assembly of quarks and gluons at thermal (local kinetic) and (close to) chemical (abundance) equilibrium. The word plasma signals that free color charges are allowed. In a 1987 summary, Léon van Hove pointed out the equivalence of the three terms: quark gluon plasma, quark matter and a new state of matter.
