- #1
DoubleHelix
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I'm asked to examine a set of processes and determine if they are possible/impossible according to the Standard Model. So I have to check that energy, baryon number, color, lepton number, quark flavor and the symmetries are conserved. I'm fine with all of these but how do you go about checking if color is conserved? I thought the colors could be assigned arbitrarily so is it just if you can't find a combination that works is it impossible?
e.g. proton + anti-proton -> pion(+) + pion(-)
ignoring the other conservation laws for now, you know (or can atleast deduce) that quark combinations of each particle (where a particle in brackets in an anti-particle or anti-color),
uud + (u)(u)(d) -> u(d) + (u)d
so could you just arbitrarily say that the colour combination is,
RGB + (R)(G)(B) -> R(R) + (R)R
and thus color is conserved
Could somebody give me an example of a process that obeys everything besides color conservation so I know what I'm looking for?
Thanks.
e.g. proton + anti-proton -> pion(+) + pion(-)
ignoring the other conservation laws for now, you know (or can atleast deduce) that quark combinations of each particle (where a particle in brackets in an anti-particle or anti-color),
uud + (u)(u)(d) -> u(d) + (u)d
so could you just arbitrarily say that the colour combination is,
RGB + (R)(G)(B) -> R(R) + (R)R
and thus color is conserved
Could somebody give me an example of a process that obeys everything besides color conservation so I know what I'm looking for?
Thanks.