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Bottom quark
The bottom quark, beauty quark, or b quark, is an elementary particle of the third generation. It is a heavy quark with a charge of −1/3 e.
All quarks are described in a similar way by electroweak interaction and quantum chromodynamics, but the bottom quark has exceptionally low rates of transition to lower-mass quarks. The bottom quark is also notable because it is a product in almost all top quark decays, and is a frequent decay product of the Higgs boson.
The bottom quark was first described theoretically in 1973 by physicists Makoto Kobayashi and Toshihide Maskawa to explain CP violation. The name "bottom" was introduced in 1975 by Haim Harari.
The evidence for the bottom quark was first obtained in 1977 by the Fermilab E288 experiment team led by Leon M. Lederman, when proton-nucleon collisions produced bottomonium decaying to pairs of muons. The discovery was confirmed about a year later by the PLUTO and DASP2 Collaborations at the electron-positron collider DORIS at DESY. It was reported at the time that DESY scientists were in favor of the name "beauty", while the American scientists tended towards "bottom".
Kobayashi and Maskawa won the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physics for their explanation of CP-violation.
While the name "beauty" is sometimes used, "bottom" became the predominant usage by analogy of "top" and "bottom" to "up" and "down".[citation needed]
The bottom quark's "bare" mass is around 4.18 GeV/c2 – a bit more than four times the mass of a proton, and many orders of magnitude larger than common "light" quarks.
Although it almost exclusively transitions from or to a top quark, the bottom quark can decay into either an up quark or charm quark via the weak interaction. CKM matrix elements Vub and Vcb specify the rates, where both these decays are suppressed, making lifetimes of most bottom particles (~10−12 s) somewhat longer than those of charmed particles (~10−13 s), but shorter than those of strange particles (from ~10−10 to ~10−8 s).
Hub AI
Bottom quark AI simulator
(@Bottom quark_simulator)
Bottom quark
The bottom quark, beauty quark, or b quark, is an elementary particle of the third generation. It is a heavy quark with a charge of −1/3 e.
All quarks are described in a similar way by electroweak interaction and quantum chromodynamics, but the bottom quark has exceptionally low rates of transition to lower-mass quarks. The bottom quark is also notable because it is a product in almost all top quark decays, and is a frequent decay product of the Higgs boson.
The bottom quark was first described theoretically in 1973 by physicists Makoto Kobayashi and Toshihide Maskawa to explain CP violation. The name "bottom" was introduced in 1975 by Haim Harari.
The evidence for the bottom quark was first obtained in 1977 by the Fermilab E288 experiment team led by Leon M. Lederman, when proton-nucleon collisions produced bottomonium decaying to pairs of muons. The discovery was confirmed about a year later by the PLUTO and DASP2 Collaborations at the electron-positron collider DORIS at DESY. It was reported at the time that DESY scientists were in favor of the name "beauty", while the American scientists tended towards "bottom".
Kobayashi and Maskawa won the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physics for their explanation of CP-violation.
While the name "beauty" is sometimes used, "bottom" became the predominant usage by analogy of "top" and "bottom" to "up" and "down".[citation needed]
The bottom quark's "bare" mass is around 4.18 GeV/c2 – a bit more than four times the mass of a proton, and many orders of magnitude larger than common "light" quarks.
Although it almost exclusively transitions from or to a top quark, the bottom quark can decay into either an up quark or charm quark via the weak interaction. CKM matrix elements Vub and Vcb specify the rates, where both these decays are suppressed, making lifetimes of most bottom particles (~10−12 s) somewhat longer than those of charmed particles (~10−13 s), but shorter than those of strange particles (from ~10−10 to ~10−8 s).