Proton/Electron Charge: Questions & Answers

  • Thread starter Thread starter Jorjy
  • Start date Start date
  • Tags Tags
    Charge
Jorjy
Messages
6
Reaction score
0
I have some questions about the relationship between the charge of a proton and an electron.

Is it well understood why the charges are equal?
I understand that the quarks that make up a proton each have (+/-)1/3 charge, but I am curious why the charges balance out the way they do.

Is the charge of a positron exactly the same as a proton's charge?
How is it that different particles have the size type of charge?

Thanks.
 
Physics news on Phys.org
The reason for the equality is still an open question to some extent.
BUT, we could not exist if they were not equal. There would be no neutral atoms.
Coulomb repulsion would not permit objects as large as people to exist.
AND, the equality and the quark charges aid convergence of QFT (not as important).
 
There is a long ongoing discussion in this forum on this subject (I started it it).
 
Thread 'Why is there such a difference between the total cross-section data? (simulation vs. experiment)'
Well, I'm simulating a neutron-proton scattering phase shift. The equation that I solve numerically is the Phase function method and is $$ \frac{d}{dr}[\delta_{i+1}] = \frac{2\mu}{\hbar^2}\frac{V(r)}{k^2}\sin(kr + \delta_i)$$ ##\delta_i## is the phase shift for triplet and singlet state, ##\mu## is the reduced mass for neutron-proton, ##k=\sqrt{2\mu E_{cm}/\hbar^2}## is the wave number and ##V(r)## is the potential of interaction like Yukawa, Wood-Saxon, Square well potential, etc. I first...
Toponium is a hadron which is the bound state of a valance top quark and a valance antitop quark. Oversimplified presentations often state that top quarks don't form hadrons, because they decay to bottom quarks extremely rapidly after they are created, leaving no time to form a hadron. And, the vast majority of the time, this is true. But, the lifetime of a top quark is only an average lifetime. Sometimes it decays faster and sometimes it decays slower. In the highly improbable case that...
I'm following this paper by Kitaev on SL(2,R) representations and I'm having a problem in the normalization of the continuous eigenfunctions (eqs. (67)-(70)), which satisfy \langle f_s | f_{s'} \rangle = \int_{0}^{1} \frac{2}{(1-u)^2} f_s(u)^* f_{s'}(u) \, du. \tag{67} The singular contribution of the integral arises at the endpoint u=1 of the integral, and in the limit u \to 1, the function f_s(u) takes on the form f_s(u) \approx a_s (1-u)^{1/2 + i s} + a_s^* (1-u)^{1/2 - i s}. \tag{70}...
Back
Top