Hubbry Logo
search
search button
Sign in
MainMain
Historyarrow-down
starMorearrow-down
Sign in
Welcome to the community hub built on top of the Omega baryon Wikipedia article. Here, you can discuss, collect, and organize anything related to Omega baryon. The purpose of the hub is to connect people, foster deeper knowledge, and help improve the root Wikipedia article.
Add your contribution
Inside this hub
Media Collections
1
Timelines
0
Articles
0
Notes collections
0
Notes
0
Days in Chronicle
0
Omega baryon

Bubble chamber trace of the first observed Ω baryon event at Brookhaven National Laboratory, adapted from original tracing. The tracks of neutral particles (dashed lines) are not visible in the bubble chamber. The collision of a K− meson with a proton creates an Ω−, a K0 and a K+. The Ω− decays into a π− and a Ξ0, which in turn decays into a Λ0 and a π0. The Λ0 decays into a proton and a π−. The π0, invisible due to its short lifetime, decays into two photons (γ), which in turn each create an electron-positron pair.

Omega baryons (often called simply omega particles) are a family of subatomic hadrons which are represented by the symbol Ω and are either charge neutral or have a +2, +1 or −1 elementary charge. Additionally, they contain no up or down quarks.[1] Omega baryons containing top quarks are also not expected to be observed. This is because the Standard Model predicts the mean lifetime of top quarks to be roughly 5×10−25 s,[2] which is about a twentieth of the timescale necessary for the strong interactions required for hadronization, the process by which hadrons form from quarks and gluons.

The first omega baryon was the Ω−
, it was made of three strange quarks, and was discovered in 1964.[3] The discovery was a great triumph in the study of quarks, since it was found only after its existence, mass, and decay products had been predicted in 1961 by the American physicist Murray Gell-Mann and, independently, by the Israeli physicist Yuval Ne'eman. Besides the Ω−
, a charmed omega particle (Ω0
c) was discovered in 1985, in which a strange quark is replaced by a charm quark. The Ω−
 decays only via the weak interaction and has therefore a relatively long lifetime.[4] Spin (J) and parity (P) values for unobserved baryons are predicted by the quark model.[5]

Since omega baryons do not have any up or down quarks, they all have isospin 0.

The naming convention of baryons has become such that those with no light (i.e. up or down) valence quarks are called omega baryons. By default, the quarks are strange quarks, but those with one or more the strange quarks replaced by charm or bottom quarks have a subscript c or b, respectively.

Omega baryons

[edit]
Quark structure of omega baryon (Ω−
)
Omega
Particle Symbol Quark
content 		Rest mass
(MeV/c2) 		JP Q
(e) 		S C B' Mean lifetime
(s) 		Decays to
Omega[6] Ω−
 		sss 1672.45±0.29 ⁠3/2⁠+ −1 −3 0 0 (8.21±0.11)×10−11 Λ0
 + K−
 or
Ξ0
 + π−
 or
Ξ−
 + π0
Charmed omega[7] Ω0
c 		ssc 2697.5±2.6 ⁠1/2⁠+ 0 −2 +1 0 (268±24)×10−15 See Ω0
c Decay Modes
Bottom omega[8] Ω−
b 		ssb 6054.4±6.8 ⁠1/2⁠+ −1 −2 0 −1 (1.13±0.53)×10−12 Ω−
 + J/ψ (seen)
Double charmed omega† Ω+
cc 		scc ⁠1/2⁠+ +1 −1 +2 0
Charmed bottom omega† Ω0
cb 		scb ⁠1/2⁠+ 0 −1 +1 −1
Double bottom omega† Ω−
bb 		sbb ⁠1/2⁠+ −1 −1 0 −2
Triple charmed omega† Ω++
ccc 		ccc ⁠3/2⁠+ +2 0 +3 0
Double charmed bottom omega† Ω+
ccb 		ccb ⁠1/2⁠+ +1 0 +2 −1
Charmed double bottom omega† Ω0
cbb 		cbb ⁠1/2⁠+ 0 0 +1 −2
Triple bottom omega† Ω−
bbb 		bbb ⁠3/2⁠+ −1 0 0 −3

† Particle (or quantity, i.e. spin) has neither been observed nor indicated.

Recent discoveries

[edit]

The Ω−
b particle is a "doubly strange" baryon containing two strange quarks and a bottom quark. A discovery of this particle was first claimed in September 2008 by physicists working on the DØ experiment at the Tevatron facility of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory.[9][10] However, the reported mass of 6165±16 MeV/c2 was significantly higher than expected in the quark model. The apparent discrepancy from the Standard Model has since been dubbed the "Ω
b puzzle". In May 2009, the CDF collaboration made public their results on the search for the Ω−
b based on analysis of a data sample roughly four times the size of the one used by the DØ experiment.[8] CDF measured the mass to be 6054.4±6.8 MeV/c2, which was in excellent agreement with the Standard Model prediction. No signal has been observed at the DØ reported value. The two results differ by 111±18 MeV/c2, which is equivalent to 6.2 standard deviations and are therefore inconsistent. Excellent agreement between the CDF measured mass and theoretical expectations is a strong indication that the particle discovered by CDF is indeed the Ω−
b. In February 2013 the LHCb collaboration published a measurement of the Ω−
b mass that is consistent with, but more precise than, the CDF result.[11]

In March 2017, the LHCb collaboration announced the observation of five new narrow Ω0
c states decaying to Ξ+
cK−
, where the Ξ+
c was reconstructed in the decay mode pK−
π+
.[12][13] The states are named Ω
c(3000)0, Ω
c(3050)0, Ω
c(3066)0, Ω
c(3090)0 and Ω
c(3119)0. Their masses and widths were reported, but their quantum numbers could not be determined due to the large background present in the sample.

See also

[edit]

References

[edit]
[edit]
Add your contribution
Related Hubs
Hub tags