Sunday, July 8, 2012 at 11:51AM
Drew Wolfe

Pions

"In particle physics, a pion (short for pi meson, denoted with π) is any of three subatomic particlesπ0π+, and π. Pions are the lightest mesons and they play an important role in explaining the low-energy properties of the strong nuclear force."

"Pions are mesons with zero spin, and they are composed of first-generation quarks. In the quark model, an up quark and an anti-down quark make up a π+, whereas a down quark and an anti-up quark make up the π, and these are the antiparticles of one another. The uncharged pions are combinations of an up quark with an anti-up quark or a down quark with an anti-down quark, have identical quantum numbers, and hence they are only found in superpositions. The lowest-energy superposition of these is the π0, which is its own antiparticle. Together, the pions form a triplet of isospin. Each pion has isospin (I = 1) and third-component isospin equal to its charge (Iz = +1, 0 or −1)."

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