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An obvious difference between the two ways of thinking about it you mention is that in the case of the Higgs mechanism, there is an observable particle excitation of the field associated with it, which was found recently. Furthermore it should be noted that the Higgs mechanism only concerns the mass generation of some elementary particles. The mass of ...

5

Anti-matter is created from interactions. They are created as a way to conserve energy and other quantum numbers such as charge. One such interaction would be the $Z^0$ decay: $Z^0 → ν_e + \bar{ν_e}$ In this case lepton number is conserved. They do annihilate producing energy (usually photons, but they can produce other particle-antiparticle pairs) when ...

4

PDG is discussing charged current interactions, $\nu N \to \mu^- X$ and $\bar\nu N \to \mu^+ X$. These are not charge conjugate processes. The neutron is $udd$. With the neutrino, $\nu$, we need a $W^+$ for the charged current interaction, $$\nu \to W^+ \mu^-$$ We then need $$W^+ d \to u$$ Note that the neutron contains two down quarks. The case of the ...

4

Since $\pi^0$ is a pseudoscalar particle, we have $$\langle 0|J^\mu_{em}|\pi^0 \rangle =0,$$ and the pion cannot decay into two leptons with a simple photon exchange. In the Standard Model, the leading-order contributions for this process are a box diagram and a $Z^0$ exchange, as you can see in fig. 1 of arXiv:0806.4782 (replacing a $c$ quark by a light ...

4

In simple terms QCD as a "background" usually refers to LHC research where hadronic jets create a lot of particles that clutter up the results you're trying to see. I think it has become a slang term and the use is discouraged. ABCD method is a tool used to separate the particles of interest (signal) from the "other stuff" (background) made by the jets. ...

4

First, to be clear on what the graph is showing: as a function of the possible mass of the Higgs, it plots the fraction of Higgs bosons that will decay via each individual channel. Before we knew the mass of the Higgs boson, a plot like this one was useful for identifying the best channels to look at to detect the Higgs in various mass ranges. For example, ...

4

It's a theoretical demand : $$\begin{pmatrix} \nu_{e}\\ \nu_{\mu}\\ \nu_{\tau} \end{pmatrix} = \begin{pmatrix} U_{e1} & U_{e2} & U_{e3} \\ U_{\mu1} & U_{\mu2} & U_{\mu3} \\ U_{\tau1} & U_{\tau2} & U_{\tau3} \end{pmatrix} \begin{pmatrix} \nu_{1}\\ \nu_{2}\\ \nu_{3} \end{pmatrix}$$ You know that all states ...

3

It really goes deeper than just a theoretical demand on a particular domain. The Hamiltonian for any system must be unitary, because that preserves the total probability at one. This is important because if I start with some state and let it evolve for a while the system must afterwards exist in some state which means that the sum of the probabilities taken ...

3

spin 1/2 fermions (electron, proton, neutron, muon, tau, quarks) have +1 parity (by convention as pointed out in Anna's comment). The corresponding anti-fermions have -1 parity. Bosons and their anti-particles have the same parity. See this and this lecture for more information on parity.

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For this sort of task, it's easier to check through Wikipedia's list of baryons and list of mesons. Each article has a table listing the properties, including mass, of the known particles of the appropriate type, so you can just scan down the table and find the particle that matches your mass. In addition to mesons and baryons, in general, you would need to ...

3

How about this: In an $n,p,e$ gas the ratio of neutrons to protons decreases with density. For ideal degenerate gases the Fermi energies are related by $E_{F,n} = E_{F,p} + E_{F,e}$. In this situation, the largest the proton to neutron ratio can become is 1/8 when all the particles are ultra-relativistic at infinite density. To conserve momentum in the ...

2

I am not exactly sure which low energy cutoff you refer to; however, there is a low-energy cutoff for photons that I am aware of. Photons with energies on the order of $H_0\sim10^{-33}\text{eV}$ would be super-horizon modes. That is, their wavelengths would be on the order of the Hubble radius, $H_0^{-1}=14.6~Gly$. Larger than this would mean that the ...

2

There are two $SU(3)$ symmetries that are often discussed with regards to QCD. There is a gauge symmetry which corresponds to color charge which is mediated by the gluon and there is an approximate global flavor symmetry which acts on the flavors of the quarks (turns an up into down quark for example). All stable hadrons are color singlets and thus don't ...

2

For over forty years accelerator technology has been giving antiproton and positron beams, the easiest to create anti particles. Positrons are the simplest because once the energy of electrons is accelerated to the values over pair creation of e+e-, the the brehmstrahlung photons, gamma ray energies, will create electron positron pairs when interacting with ...

2

I'm not entirely sure what the answer to this question is. It's probably not friction heat alone as Parth Vader claims, since you can ignite coarse steel wool with the flame of a match, and yet the significantly finer "atomized" 100-mesh aluminum will not ignite under the same conditions ("atomized" refers to the manufacturing method of molten metal ...

2

Recall $|E,l,m \rangle$ is the joint eigenvector of the Hamiltonian $H$, the total spin $L^2$, and a spin component (typically z) $L_z$, and the $E$, $l$ and $m$ label their respective eigenvalues. Notice all three of these operators act on the single particle that we're considering. Also recall $\langle k |$ is an element in the momentum basis, also in the ...

2

Both statements are correct. Only left-handed electrons and left-handed neutrinos participate in weak interactions. The projection operators $$P_L = \frac{1}{2}(1-\gamma^5)\\ P_R = \frac{1}{2}(1+\gamma^5)\\$$ satisfy the relations $$P_L \gamma_\mu = \gamma_\mu P_R\\ P_LP_R=0\\ P_LP_L=P_L\\ P_L + P_R =1$$ From this it follows that $$j^\mu=\bar u_e ... 2 Yes, e.g. all three Mandelstam variables$$ s~:=~(p_1+p_2)^2 ~\approx~ (m_1+m_2)^2 + \frac{m_1m_2}{2} ({\bf v}_1-{\bf v}_2)^2 ~>~0, t~:=~(p_1-p_3)^2~\approx~ (m_1-m_3)^2 - \frac{m_1m_3}{2} ({\bf v}_1-{\bf v}_3)^2 ~>~0, u~:=~(p_1-p_4)^2~\approx~ (m_1-m_4)^2 - \frac{m_1m_4}{2} ({\bf v}_1-{\bf v}_4)^2 ~>~0, are strictly positive in ...

2

The actual masses are accessible in theory, but not from mixing measurements. Cosmological measurements could give us a useable handle on the sum of the masses (though until we settle the hierarchy questions this may not provide a unique answer), or the combination of a much better model of supernovae plus a precision measurement of the differences in ...

2

Can we squeeze atoms? Yes. High pressure changes the wavefunctions of electrons in atoms. See for example Accurate Wavefuctions for the Confined Hydrogen Atom at High Pressures. One effect of this is to increase the rate of electron capture by the nucleus, since s electrons will spend more time at/in the nucleus at high pressure. See the lecture: ...

2

The experiments at LHC hit protons on each other at total energy of 7 TeV. In comparison, a flying moscquito has a kinetic energy of 1 TeV: a trillion electronvolts, or 1.602×10−7 J, about the kinetic energy of a flying mosquito[12] Could one collide two flying bees of 3.5TeV kinetic energy and get a proton proton collision? i.e. give the total ...

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The standard model of particle physics is a theoretical framework that encapsulates almost all elementary particle data to date. The full Lagrangian takes pages. In your comment: @Danu I understand the 6/7 Wightman axioms but fail to capture how does the concepts of fundamnetal particles, quarks-leptons, or bosons mediating forces etc. come from those. ...

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http://www.quantumdiaries.org/2014/04/04/moriond-2014-new-results-new-explorations-but-no-new-physics/ Top quark mass has been revised upward.

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I would guess, and it can only be a guess, that Stewart is referring to weak measurement. There is a rather vague description of this in New scientist. Annoyingly I can't track down the original paper, but if Stewart's book was written in 2013 the timing fits.

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Electron doesn't 'get into' the shape of the orbital. An atomic orbital is a mathematical function that describes the wave-like behavior of either one electron or a pair of electrons in an atom. This function can be used to calculate the probability of finding any electron of an atom in any specific region around the atom's nucleus. The term may also refer ...

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I will offer two reasons. First, unitarity of mixing matrices insures that probabilities sum to one. The probability of an oscillating neutrino having electron, muon or tau flavour should equal one. Second, because the neutrino mass matrix is Hermitian it is diagonalised by a unitary matrix.

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In the Standard Model, fermion number is not conserved. Lepton number is conserved, because of an accidental symmetry. One cannot write down a renormalizable, gauge and Lorentz invariant operator that violates lepton number conservation in the Standard Model. A Majorana neutrino would violate lepton number conservation by two units. To see this, consider, ...

1

Yes, it's a misconception, or not - or both. What do you call "matter"? Let's call matter particles with a rest mass. So, everything that's made up of elementary particles is matter. Now here's the catch: To the best of our knowledge, elementary particles are pointlike, i.e. they really don't have any extend in space, they don't really "occupy" any space. ...

1

I don't know what a "pile" of fuel is. I assume you mean a container full of it. Gasoline needs oxygen to burn, and it needs the correct mixture. Too little oxygen and burning is impossible. Too much oxygen causes the same problem. To achieve ignition with Gasoline, you need between 1.4 and 7.6% petrol vapour (by volume) in the air. Ouside this range ...

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I'll only address your first question here. To start off with a sidenote, I think the idea that mass is a fundamental property of a particle has been on shaky ground ever since Einstein showed the equivalence of mass and energy. I can hardly imagine it took very long for people to come to the conclusion that mass cannot be a fundamental property of ...

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