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Three antiquarks of different anticolors, giving an antibaryon with baryon number −1. The baryon number was defined long before the quark model was established, so rather than changing the definitions, particle physicists simply gave quarks one third the baryon number. Nowadays it might be more accurate to speak of the conservation of quark ...
Mesons named with the letter "f" are scalar mesons (as opposed to a pseudo-scalar meson), and mesons named with the letter "a" are axial-vector mesons (as opposed to an ordinary vector meson) a.k.a. an isoscalar vector meson, while the letters "b" and "h" refer to axial-vector mesons with positive parity, negative C-parity, and quantum numbers I G of 1 + and 0 − respectively.
Because quarks have a spin 1 / 2 , the difference in quark number between mesons and baryons results in conventional two-quark mesons being bosons, whereas baryons are fermions. Each type of meson has a corresponding antiparticle (antimeson) in which quarks are replaced by their corresponding antiquarks and vice versa.
Baryons and mesons are both hadrons, which are particles composed solely of quarks or both quarks and antiquarks. The term baryon is derived from the Greek "βαρύς" ( barys ), meaning "heavy", because, at the time of their naming, it was believed that baryons were characterized by having greater masses than other particles that were classed ...
Mesons are hadrons with zero baryon number. If the quark–antiquark pair are in an orbital angular momentum L state, and have spin S, then | L − S | ≤ J ≤ L + S, where S = 0 or 1, P = (−1) L+1, where the 1 in the exponent arises from the intrinsic parity of the quark–antiquark pair. C = (−1) L+S for mesons which have no flavor.
The baryon number (B) is + 1 / 3 for all quarks, as baryons are made of three quarks. For antiquarks, the electric charge (Q) and all flavor quantum numbers (B, I 3, C, S, T, and B′) are of opposite sign.
Significantly, the X and Y bosons couple quarks (constituents of protons and others) to leptons (such as positrons), allowing violation of the conservation of baryon number thus permitting proton decay. However, the Hyper-Kamiokande has put a lower bound on the proton's half-life as around 10 34 years. [2]
These include glueballs and hybrid mesons (mesons bound by excited gluons). Because mesons have an even number of quarks, they are also all bosons, with integer spin, i.e., 0, +1, or −1. They have baryon number B = 1 / 3 − 1 / 3 = 0 . Examples of mesons commonly produced in particle physics experiments include pions and kaons.