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Parton (particle physics)

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Parton (particle physics)

In particle physics, the parton model is a model of hadrons, such as protons and neutrons, proposed by Richard Feynman. It is useful for interpreting the cascades of radiation (a parton shower) produced from quantum chromodynamics (QCD) processes and interactions in high-energy particle collisions.

The parton model was proposed by Richard Feynman in 1969, used originally for analysis of high-energy hadron collisions. It was applied to electron-proton deep inelastic scattering by James Bjorken and Emmanuel Anthony Paschos. Later, with the experimental observation of Bjorken scaling, the validation of the quark model, and the confirmation of asymptotic freedom in quantum chromodynamics, partons were matched to quarks and gluons. The parton model remains a justifiable approximation at high energies, and others[who?] have extended the theory[how?] over the years.

Murray Gell-Mann preferred to use the term "put-ons" to refer to partons.

In 1994, partons were used by Leonard Susskind to model holography.

Any hadron (for example, a proton) can be considered as a composition of a number of point-like constituents, termed "partons".

Just as accelerated electric charges emit QED radiation (photons), the accelerated coloured partons will emit QCD radiation in the form of gluons. Unlike the uncharged photons, the gluons themselves carry colour charges and can therefore emit further radiation, leading to parton showers.

The hadron is defined in a reference frame where it has infinite momentum – a valid approximation at high energies. Thus, parton motion is slowed by time dilation, and the hadron charge distribution is Lorentz-contracted, so incoming particles will be scattered "instantaneously and incoherently".[citation needed]

Partons are defined with respect to a physical scale (as probed by the inverse of the momentum transfer).[clarification needed] For instance, a quark parton at one length scale can turn out to be a superposition of a quark parton state with a quark parton and a gluon parton state together with other states with more partons at a smaller length scale. Similarly, a gluon parton at one scale can resolve into a superposition of a gluon parton state, a gluon parton and quark-antiquark partons state and other multiparton states. Because of this, the number of partons in a hadron actually goes up with momentum transfer. At low energies (i.e. large length scales), a baryon contains three valence partons (quarks) and a meson contains two valence partons (a quark and an antiquark parton). At higher energies, however, observations show sea partons (nonvalence partons) in addition to valence partons.

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