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MarcAlexander
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If a Meson is a Hadron that contains a Quark and an Anti-Quark which are both Fermions then why are Mesons a type of Gauge Boson?
jtbell said:Which mesons are you thinking of? I don't know of any that are also gauge bosons.
In the Standard Model, the gauge bosons are the photon, Z0, W+, W- and the gluons. None of these are mesons.
Dead Boss said:You are mixing bosons and gauge bosons.
Boson is a general name for particles with integral spin (0, 1, 2). They can be elementary or composite particles. Mesons are composite particles with spin 1 so they are bosons. Gauge boson is a boson mediating interaction in a gauge theory. I'm not sure if they can be composite, but the known gauge bosons are all elementary. Photon, gluon, Z, W+, W-.
EDIT: The spin of a composite particle is "sum" of the spins of constituent particles. Though this is not ordinary sum, with mesons it's pretty simple. Each quark has spin 1/2. The spins can be either parallel (you add spins) or anti-parallel (you subtract spins). Thus a two quark particle can have spin either 0 or 1.
Dead Boss said:Particles are divided into two large groups:
Bosons - spin 0, 1, 2, 3, ...
Fermions - spin 1/2, 3/2, 5/2, 7/2, ...
So it's just a question of spin. Photon has spin 1 - it's a boson, electron has spin 1/2 - it's a fermion, Higgs has spin 0 - it's a boson, proton has spin 1/2 - it's a fermion, Pi meson has spin 0 - it's a boson, etc.
Gauge bosons are special family of bosons (a subset of all bosons).
MarcAlexander said:What exactly is spin, besides a property of a particle? As in what affect does it have on the particle?
Mesons are a type of subatomic particle that are composed of a quark and an antiquark. They are different from other particles because they have a non-zero spin and are considered to be bosons, while most other particles are fermions.
Mesons are a type of gauge boson because they mediate the strong nuclear force, just like gluons. However, unlike gluons, which are massless, mesons have a non-zero mass due to the quark-antiquark pair they are composed of.
In the Standard Model, mesons are one of the fundamental particles that make up matter. They are responsible for mediating the strong nuclear force, which is one of the four fundamental forces in nature.
Scientists study and detect mesons using high-energy particle accelerators, such as the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN. By colliding particles at high speeds, scientists can create mesons and study their properties using detectors.
Yes, mesons can be created and destroyed in certain natural processes, such as in high-energy collisions between particles. However, they are not stable particles and decay quickly into other particles, making them difficult to observe in nature.