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Particle Physics - Glossary of particles Category: Sciences > Glossary of particles Date & country: 17/11/2010, USA Words: 46

Anti-neutrino
The antiparticle of aneutrino.

Antiparticle
A particle and its antiparticle have a number of opposite properties.If they have charge, then these will be opposite. For example themuon is negatively charged and the anti-muon is positively charged.However the neutrino and antineutrino are both uncharged, but are neverthelessare different (they have a property called lepton number, which isopposite).

Antimatter
Matter composed of the antiparticles ofnormal matter.

Baryons
Particles consisting of three quarks.Neutrons,protons, and the lambdas areall baryons.

Boson
A force-carrier particle. Photons, gluons, W, and Z particles are allbosons. Another type of boson, the Higgs, is proposed as the mechanism by whichparticles acquire mass.

CERN
The European Laboratory for Particle Physics, located near Geneva on theSwiss-French border. The LEP accelerator is located at CERN.

Colour
Property of quarks associated with their binding with gluons.

Cosmic rays
High energy particles from outer space.

CP violation
In almost all circumstances antimatter seen in a mirror behaveslike normal matter. Very occasionally, in the decay of kaons (andperhaps in the decay of B-mesons, though this has not yet been seen), thisrule is violated. This is known as CP violation.

DESY
The Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY) in Hamburg.The HERA accelerator is located at DESY.

Electron
A negatively charged particle (lepton) making up the outer shell ofthe atom.

Electromagnetic force
A force with infinite range which acts between objectsaccording to their charge. Specific cases are the electric and magnetic forces.The electromagnetic force is carried by photons.

Electroweak Force
A force resulting from the combination of theelectromagnetic force and theweak force.

Electron Volt (eV)
One electron Volt (eV)is the energy gained by an electron when it is accelerated through apotential of 1 Volt.The binding energy on an electron in an atom is of the order of 1 eV.

Fermion
A matter particle. Leptons (such as the electron and neutrinos) and quarksare fermions.

Fermilab
The Fermi National AcceleratorLaboratory which is situated 30 miles west of Chicago.The Tevatron accelerator is located at Fermilab.

Flavour
A characteristic that distinguishes different types ofhadrons and leptons withdifferent masses (apart from the neutrinos,which as far as we know, are massless).

Giga electron Volt (GeV)
One billion electron Volts, or 1,000,000,000 eV.The energy-equivalent (E=mc^2) of the mass of a proton is about 1 GeV.

Gluons
The carrier particle of thestrong force.

Gravity
A force with infinite range which acts between objects, such as planets,according to their mass.

Hadrons
Particles made up of quarks. There are two types of hadrons:baryons and mesons.

HERA
HERA is an electron-protoncollider at DESY, which uses theelectrons as a probe to understand the structure of the proton.The results of these collisions are detected by two detectors, ZEUSand H1.

kaon
The lightest strange meson, consisting of an up or down quark, with a strange anti-quark.

Lambda
The lightest strange baryon, consisting of one up, one down,and one strange quark.

Leptons
A family of particles consisting of the electron,the muon and the tau, along with theirneutrinos.

LEP
The Large Electron Positron collider, the world's largest particleaccelerator, which is 26.7 km in circumference and some 100 metres underground,situated at CERN. LEP collides electrons and positrons atenergies sufficent to produce the Z and (soon) W particles, carriers of theweak force.

Mesons
A family of particles consisting of a quark and an anti-quark.pions, kaons,and B-mesons are all mesons.

Muon
A heavier flavour of leptonthan the electron.

Neutrino
An uncharged, massless (or at least extremely light), lepton.Like the charged leptons, they can come in three types (or flavours):electron neutrinos, muon neutrinos,or tau neutrinos.

Neutron
A neutral particle (baryon) consisting of two down and oneup quarks which is found in and makesup the atomic nucleus.

Particle Physics
Particle Physics is the study of thebasic elements of matter and the forces acting among them. It aims to determinethe fundamental laws that control the make up of matter and the physicaluniverse.

Particle beams
A stream of particles guided into a defined direction by anparticle accelerator.

Photon
The carrier particle of the electromagnetic force.Electromagnetic radiation, such as light, can be thought of as beingcomposed of photons.

Pion
Pions are the lightest mesons. They consist of up and down quarks (eg. the pi+ consists of an up quark and a down anti-quark).

Positron
An Anti-electon.The positively-charged antiparticle of anelectron.

Proton
A positively-charged particle (baryon) consisting of two up and onedownquarks which is found in and makes up the atomicnucleus.

Quark
A fundamental particle. Six types (or flavours) ofquarks are known. Up and down flavours are constituents ofprotons and neutrons.The other, heavier, quarks are called strange, charm,bottom, and top.

RAL
The Rutherford Appleton Laboratorysituated at Chilton, near Oxford.

Solenoid (magnet)
An electromagnet produced by current flowing through a single coil of wire.Many particle detectors are surrounded by a solenoidal magnet, since thisproduces a fairly uniform magnetic field within.

Strong Force
A force which binds quarks together.Its range is limited to the distances between quarks in hadrons, but an indirect effect of the strong force is to bind protons and neutronstogether to form nuclei.The strong force is carried by gluons.

Sub-atomic
Smaller than the atom. The structure of the atom.

Tau
The heaviest known lepton.

Tera electron Volt (TeV)
One trillion electron volts, or 1,000 GeV.So far the most powerful accelerators in the world (eg. the Tevatron atFermilab) can produce beams of protons with an energy of about 1 TeV.

Tevatron
A proton accelerator at Fermilab which can accelerate protons tonearly one trillion electron volts (1 TeV). Two detectors, CDF and D0,detect the results when these protons collide. Recently these detectors havedetected the heaviest-known quark, the top.

Weak Force
Interactions that change the flavour of particles; for example thedecay of a neutron into a proton,electron, and anti-neutrino; are governed bythe weak force. The weak force is the only one that affects neutrinos.

B-meson
One of the heaviest mesons, containing a bottom quark.