Upsilon particle
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 A plot of the invariant mass of muon pairs, from the Upsilon particle discovery paper. The peak at about 9.5 GeV represents the particle itself. |
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| Composition | bb |
|---|---|
| Family | Hadron |
| Group | Meson |
| Electric charge | 0 C |
| Spin | 1 |
The Upsilon particle (Υ) is a flavorless meson formed from a bottom quark and its antiparticle. It was discovered by the E288 collaboration, headed by Leon Lederman, at Fermilab in 1977, and was the first particle containing a bottom quark to be discovered because it is the lightest that can be produced without additional massive particles. It has a lifetime of 1.21x10-20 seconds and a mass about 10 GeV.
[edit] See also
- Oops-Leon, an erroneously-claimed discovery of a similar particle at a lower mass in 1976.
- Quarkonium, the general name for mesons formed from a quark and the corresponding antiquark.
- The φ partile is the analogous state made from strange quarks.
- The J/ψ particle is the analogous state made from charm quarks.
- List of mesons
[edit] References
- Hom, D.C., et al. (1977). "Observation of a Dimuon Resonance at 9.5 Gev in 400-GeV Proton-Nucleus Collisions". Phys. Rev. Lett. 39: 252–255. doi:.
- Yoh, John (1998). "The Discovery of the b Quark at Fermilab in 1977: The Experiment Coordinator's Story". AIP Conf. Proc. 424: 29–42.
- Technical data (pdf file) from Particle Data Group (From 2005 update of S. Eidelman et al. (2004). "Review of Particle Physics". Phys. Lett. B 592: 1.)
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