The discussion centers around the concept of hadronic components in photons, specifically in the context of vector meson dominance. Participants explore how photons can possess hadronic characteristics and the implications of this idea in particle physics.
The discussion does not reach a consensus, as participants express varying levels of understanding and seek clarification on specific concepts related to hadronic components and vector mesons.
Some assumptions about the nature of virtual particles and the interactions involved are not fully explored, and the discussion relies on definitions that may vary in different contexts.
See another reference which gives a more complete description, such as this one. The basic idea is that a virtual photon turns into a quark-antiquark pair, which then turns into one of the vector mesons, and that furthermore all interactions of photons with hadrons take place predominantly via this process.Pseudo Epsilon said:the wiki article on vector meson dominance says "hadronic components of the physical photons". How can a photon have hadronic photon components? Could someone please enlighten me?