Related papers: Baryons and the Borromeo
In a model where a multiverse wavefunction explores a multitude of vacua with different symmetries and parameters, properties of universes closely related to ours can be understood by examining the consequences of small departures of…
The Standard Model of Particle Physics has proven to be tremendously successful as the fundamental theory that describes the elementary particles that compose our Universe, as well as the interactions among them. Despite the countless…
Protons and neutrons are the building blocks of matter, glued together in nuclei by strong interactions. They can be excited by pions, real and virtual photons, neutrinos and other probes. These excitations are referred to as light baryon…
The Standard Model has been incredibly successful in predicting the outcome of almost all the experiments done up so far. In it, neutrinos are mass-less. However, in recent years we have accumulated evidence pointing to tiny masses for the…
There are many theories that have resided these last fifty years within the hazy mist we have been calling the Standard Model (SM) of elementary particles. An attempt is made here to construct a coherent description of the SM today, because…
There exists one experimental result that cannot be explained by the Standard Model (SM), the current theoretical framework for particle physics: non-zero masses for the neutrinos (elementary particles travelling close to light speed,…
Complex molecules are intriguing objects at the interface between quantum and classical phenomena. Compared to the electrons, neutrons, or atoms studied in earlier matter-wave experiments, they feature a much more complicated internal…
The Standard Model of Particle Physics cannot explain the observed baryon asymmetry of the Universe. This observation is a clear sign of new physics beyond the Standard Model. There have been many recent theoretical developments to address…
Our world is wonderful because of the normal but negligibly small baryonic part (i.e., atoms) although unknown dark matter and dark energy dominate the Universe. A stable atomic nucleus could be simply termed as ``strong matter'' since its…
The Standard Model of particle physics encapsulates our current best understanding of physics at the smallest distances and highest energies. It incorporates Quantum Electrodynamics (the quantised version of Maxwell's electromagnetism) and…
The proton mass arises from spontaneous breaking of chiral symmetry and the formation of constituent quarks. Their dynamics cannot be tested by proton tomography but only by studying excited baryons. However, the number of excited baryons…
The triumphs of the Standard Model of Particle Physics call attention upon an old idea, that the so-called vacuum is an accessible physical medium, and not just a tautology. I take this idea as a serious working hypothesis, and I suggest a…
Our concept of the basic constituents of matter has undergone two revolutionary changes -- from atoms to proton & neutron and then onto quarks & leptons. Indeed all these quarks and leptons have been seen by now along with the carriers of…
Preons are hypothetic constituents of the standard particles. They were initially assumed to have basically similar properties to those of conventional matter. But this is not necessarily the case: the ultimate constituents of matter may…
The relic abundances of the light elements synthesized during the first few minutes of the evolution of the Universe provide unique probes of cosmology and the building blocks for stellar and galactic chemical evolution, while also enabling…
Visible matter is characterised by a single mass scale; namely, the proton mass. The proton's existence and structure are supposed to be described by quantum chromodynamics (QCD); yet, absent Higgs boson couplings, chromodynamics is scale…
The improved quark mass density- dependent model, which has been successfully used to describe the properties of both finite nuclei and bulk nuclear matter, is extended to include the strange quark. The parameters of the model are…
Motivated by a revision of the classical equations of electromagnetism that allow for the inclusion of solitary waves in the solution space, the material collected in these notes examines the consequences of adopting the modified model in…
The Standard Model of the electroweak and strong interactions of particle physics is a quantum field theory. Elementary particles are not indivisible `pieces' of matter but energy bundles of fields, whose properties and interactions are a…
Subsequent to the early Universe quark-hadron transition the universal baryon number is carried by nucleons: neutrons and protons. The total number of nucleons is preserved as the Universe expands, but as it cools lighter protons are…