Skip to main content

Quarks and flavour of quarks.

Quarks

Gellmann and independently George Nishijina propose that all baryons consist of three fundamental particles. Gellmann named these particles 'quarks' from the phrase 'three quarks for Muster Mark' appear in the novel Finnegann's Wake. The three fundamental quarks are up, down and strange. The up and down quarks have strangeness number zero and the strange quark have strangeness number -1.
Since each baryon (B = 1) consist of three quarks, thus each quark has baryon number B = 1/3. Each antibaryon (B = -1) consist of three antiquarks, thus each antiquark have B = -1/3. 
A meson (B = 0) is supposed to consist of a quark and an antiquark.
Quarks and antiquarks have spin equal to 1/2.
Each quark have fractional charge. No particle in nature have fractional charge, so quark hypothesis was hard to accept at the beginning. The existence of quark was proved by the simple experiment which involved scattering of high energy electrons by protons. 

Flavour of quarks

There are six types of quarks known as flavour of quarks. These are top, bottom, up, down, strange and charm. The up and down quarks have the lowest masses of all the quarks. The heavy mass quarks change into up and down quarks by a process of particle decay in which higher mass states are transformed into lower mass states. Therefore the up and down quarks are stable and mostly common in universe. Each quark flavour has its antiparticle known as antiquarks which are different in only few properties and are denoted by a bar over the symbol for the corresponding quark. The six quarks with their electric charge, symbol and strangeness number is shown in fig below.
Flavour of quarks
Flavour of quarks.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

LS coupling and jj coupling.

 Total angular momentum: The total angular momentum of an electron is the sum of the orbital angular momentum and spin angular momentum of the electron i.e Coupling Scheme Since an atom consist of large number of electrons having different orbital and spin momenta, Coupling scheme is necessary to obtain the resultant orbit and spin momenta of atom as a whole. There are two types of coupling scheme namely 1) LS Coupling 2) JJ Coupling. 1)LS Coupling: In this coupling the 'l' vectors of all electrons combine to form resultant 'L' vector and all the 's' vectors of these electrons combine to form resultant 'S' vector. Then the 'L' vector and 'S' vector undergoes vector addition to give resultant 'J' vector which represents the total angular momentum of an atom. Symbolically LS coupling is represented as This type of coupling is governed by the following principles: 1) All the three vectors (L,S and J vectors) are quantized. 2)L is an ...

Different kinds of beta decay.

 Different kinds of beta decay 1) Negative beta decay process: When there is excess number of neutrons in the nucleus, the neutron is converted into proton with the emission of electron and antineutrino particle and this process is called negative beta decay process. Negative beta decay. 2) Positive beta decay process: When there is excess number of protons in the nucleus, the proton is converted into neutron with the emission of positron and neutrino particle and this process is called positive beta decay process. Positive beta decay. 3) Electron Capture: When there is excess number of protons in the nucleus, sometimes the nucleus will absorbed the nearby electrons in the nearest electron orbital emitting neutron and a neutrino and this process is called electron capture. Electron capture. 4) Inverse beta decay: Inverse beta decay. Thus such kind of reaction in which neutrinos are absorbed to create some sort of beta decay is called inverse beta decay. Inverse beta decay confirm t...

Photoelectric effect.

 Photoelectric effect; The emission of electrons by a substance under the action of light is called Photoelectric effect. Photoelectric Effect. Experimental Setup: The phenomenon of photoelectric effect can be studied with the help of an apparatus shown in Figure below. Within an evacuated glass jacket two electrodes R and S are enclosed and the light radiation is allowed to enter the jacket through a quartz window. The radiation falls on electrode R, called cathode. The electrode S can be kept at desired (positive or negative) potential with respect to the cathode. A sensitive ammeter is put in the circuit to record current resulting from photoelectrons. The potential difference between the cathode and anode can be measured by voltmeter . Experimental Setup. Experimental observations The experimental observation of photoelectric effect may be summarised as follows; 1) Effect of Intensity of light on Photoelectric current; For a constant potential difference between the cathode ...