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EIRE2003
Apr15-04, 05:55 PM
A quark and an anti - quark combine to form a meson. The pi-meson family is made up of u and d quarks only. A pi-meson can be positively, negatively or neutrally charged.
Give the quark composition of each of the 3 types of pi-meson.

The positively charged pion has a composition of an anti down quark and an up quark.

The neutrally charged pion has a composition of an anti-up quark and an up quark + an anti down quark and a down quark / square root of 2. What does this mean??

What is the composition of the negatively charged pi meson?

Is it these 3 types of mesons it is asking me for the compositions of?

chroot
Apr15-04, 06:11 PM
The neutral pi meson is a resonance -- it's either anti-up and up or anti-down and down, and you can't tell the two apart. The total quantum-mechanical state is a combination of both of those possibilitities. That's where the \sqrt{2} comes in.

The negative pion is the "opposite" of the positive pion -- you can figure it out.

- Warren

EIRE2003
Apr15-04, 06:19 PM
thank you!