Quark model - Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.

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ark model
In particle physics, the quark model is a classification scheme for hadrons in terms of
their valence quarks—the quarks and antiquarks which give rise to the quantum numbers
of the hadrons. e quark model underlies "flavor SU(3)", or the Eightfold Way, the
successful classification scheme organizing the large number of lighter hadrons that were
being discovered starting in the 1950s and continuing through the 1960s. It received
experimental verification beginning in the late 1960s and is a valid effective classification
of them to date. e model was independently proposed by physicists Murray Gell-
Mann,[1] who dubbed them "quarks" in a concise paper, and George Zweig,[2][3] who
suggested "aces" in a longer manuscript. André Petermann also touched upon the central
ideas from 1963 to 1965, without as much quantitative substantiation.[4][5] Today, the
model has essentially been absorbed as a component of the established quantum field
theory of strong and electroweak particle interactions, dubbed the Standard Model. Figure 1: The pseudoscalar
meson nonet. Members of the
Hadrons are not really "elementary", and can be regarded as bound states of their original meson "octet" are
"valence quarks" and antiquarks, which give rise to the quantum numbers of the hadrons. shown in green, the singlet in
ese quantum numbers are labels identifying the hadrons, and are of two kinds. One set magenta. Although these
comes from the Poincaré symmetry—JPC, where J, P and C stand for the total angular mesons are now grouped into a
nonet, the Eightfold Way name
momentum, P-symmetry, and C-symmetry, respectively.
derives from the patterns of
e other set is the flavor quantum numbers such as the isospin, strangeness, charm, and eight for the mesons and
so on. e strong interactions binding the quarks together are insensitive to these baryons in the original
quantum numbers, so variation of them leads to systematic mass and coupling classification scheme.
relationships among the hadrons in the same flavor multiplet.

All quarks are assigned a baryon number of ⅓. Up, charm and top quarks have an electric charge of +⅔, while the down, strange,
and boom quarks have an electric charge of −⅓. Antiquarks have the opposite quantum numbers. arks are spin-½ particles,
and thus fermions. Each quark or antiquark obeys the Gell-Mann−Nishijima formula individually, so any additive assembly of
them will as well.

Mesons are made of a valence quark−antiquark pair (thus have a baryon number of 0), while baryons are made of three quarks
(thus have a baryon number of 1). is article discusses the quark model for the up, down, and strange flavors of quark (which
form an approximate flavor SU(3) symmetry). ere are generalizations to larger number of flavors.

Contents
History
Mesons
Baryons
The discovery of color
States outside the quark model
See also
Notes
References

History
Developing classification schemes for hadrons became a timely question aer new experimental techniques uncovered so many
of them that it became clear that they could not all be elementary. ese discoveries led Wolfgang Pauli to exclaim "Had I
foreseen that, I would have gone into botany." and Enrico Fermi to advise his student Leon Lederman: "Young man, if I could
remember the names of these particles, I would have been a botanist." ese new schemes earned Nobel prizes for experimental
particle physicists, including Luis Alvarez, who was at the forefront of many of these developments. Constructing hadrons as
bound states of fewer constituents would thus organize the "zoo" at hand. Several early proposals, such as the ones by Enrico
Fermi and Chen-Ning Yang (1949), and the Sakata model (1956), ended up satisfactorily covering the mesons, but failed with
baryons, and so were unable to explain all the data.

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e Gell-Mann–Nishijima formula, developed by Murray Gell-Mann and Kazuhiko Nishijima, led to the Eightfold Way
classification, invented by Gell-Mann, with important independent contributions from Yuval Ne'eman, in 1961. e hadrons
were organized into SU(3) representation multiplets, octets and decuplets, of roughly the same mass, due to the strong
interactions; and smaller mass differences linked to the flavor quantum numbers, invisible to the strong interactions. e Gell-
Mann–Okubo mass formula systematized the quantification of these small mass differences among members of a hadronic
multiplet, controlled by the explicit symmetry breaking of SU(3).
−
e spin-3⁄2 Ω baryon, a member of the ground-state decuplet, was a crucial prediction of that classification. Aer it was
discovered in an experiment at Brookhaven National Laboratory, Gell-Mann received a Nobel prize in physics for his work on
the Eightfold Way, in 1969.

Finally, in 1964, Gell-Mann, and, independently, George Zweig, discerned what the Eightfold Way picture encodes: ey posited
three elementary fermionic constituents – the "up", "down", and "strange" quarks – which are unobserved, and possibly
unobservable in a free form. Simple pairwise or triplet combinations of these three constituents and their antiparticles underlie
and elegantly encode the Eightfold Way classification, in an economical, tight structure, resulting in further simplicity. Hadronic
mass differences were now linked to the different masses of the constituent quarks.

It would take about a decade for the unexpected nature—and physical reality—of these quarks to be appreciated more fully (See
arks). Counter-intuitively, they cannot ever be observed in isolation (color confinement), but instead always combine with
other quarks to form full hadrons, which then furnish ample indirect information on the trapped quarks themselves. Conversely,
the quarks serve in the definition of quantum chromodynamics, the fundamental theory fully describing the strong interactions;
and the Eightfold Way is now understood to be a consequence of the flavor symmetry structure of the lightest three of them.

Mesons
e Eightfold Way classification is named aer the following fact: If we take three flavors
of quarks, then the quarks lie in the fundamental representation, 3 (called the triplet) of
flavor SU(3). e antiquarks lie in the complex conjugate representation 3. e nine
states (nonet) made out of a pair can be decomposed into the trivial representation, 1
(called the singlet), and the adjoint representation, 8 (called the octet). e notation for
this decomposition is

Figure 1 shows the application of this decomposition to the mesons. If the flavor Figure 2: Pseudoscalar mesons
symmetry were exact (as in the limit that only the strong interactions operate, but the of spin 0 form a nonet
electroweak interactions are notionally switched o), then all nine mesons would have
the same mass. However, the physical content of the full theory includes consideration of
the symmetry breaking induced by the quark mass differences, and considerations of
mixing between various multiplets (such as the octet and the singlet).

N.B. Nevertheless, the mass spliing between the η and the η′ is larger than the quark
model can accommodate, and this "η–η′ puzzle" has its origin in topological peculiarities
of the strong interaction vacuum, such as instanton configurations.

Mesons are hadrons with zero baryon number. If the quark–antiquark pair are in an
orbital angular momentum L state, and have spin S, then Figure 3: Mesons of spin 1
form a nonet
▪ |L − S| ≤ J ≤ L + S, where S = 0 or 1,
▪ P = (−1)L + 1, where the 1 in the exponent arises from the intrinsic
parity of the quark–antiquark pair.
▪ C = (−1)L + S for mesons which have no flavor. Flavored mesons have indefinite value of C.
▪ For isospin I = 1 and 0 states, one can define a new multiplicative quantum number called the
G-parity such that G = (−1)I + L + S.

If P = (−1)J, then it follows that S = 1, thus PC= 1. States with these quantum numbers are called natural parity states; while all
other quantum numbers are thus called exotic (for example the state JPC = 0−−).

Baryons
Since quarks are fermions, the spin–statistics theorem implies that the wavefunction of a baryon must be antisymmetric under
exchange of any two quarks. is antisymmetric wavefunction is obtained by making it fully antisymmetric in color, discussed
below, and symmetric in flavor, spin and space put together. With three flavors, the decomposition in flavor is

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e decuplet is symmetric in flavor, the singlet antisymmetric and the two octets have mixed
symmetry. e space and spin parts of the states are thereby fixed once the orbital angular
momentum is given.

It is sometimes useful to think of the basis states of quarks as the six states of three flavors
and two spins per flavor. is approximate symmetry is called spin-flavor SU(6). In terms of
this, the decomposition is Figure 4. The S = 1⁄2 ground
state baryon octet

e 56 states with symmetric combination of spin and flavour decompose under flavor SU(3)
into

where the superscript denotes the spin, S, of the baryon. Since these states are symmetric in
spin and flavor, they should also be symmetric in space—a condition that is easily satisfied
by making the orbital angular momentum L = 0. ese are the ground state baryons.
Figure 5. The S = 3⁄2 baryon
+ 0 + 0 −
e S = 1⁄2 octet baryons are the two nucleons (p , n ), the three Sigmas (Σ , Σ , Σ ), the two decuplet
0 − 0 ++ +
Xis (Ξ , Ξ ), and the Lambda (Λ ). e S = 3⁄2 decuplet baryons are the four Deltas (Δ , Δ ,
0 − ∗+ ∗0 ∗− ∗0 ∗− −
Δ , Δ ), three Sigmas (Σ , Σ , Σ ), two Xis (Ξ , Ξ ), and the Omega (Ω ).

For example, the constituent quark model wavefunction for the proton is

Mixing of baryons, mass spliings within and between multiplets, and magnetic moments are some of the other quantities that
the model predicts successfully.

The discovery of color

Color quantum numbers are the characteristic charges of the strong force, and are completely uninvolved in electroweak
interactions. ey were discovered as a consequence of the quark model classification, when it was appreciated that the spin
++
S = 3⁄2 baryon, the Δ , required three up quarks with parallel spins and vanishing orbital angular momentum. erefore, it could
not have an antisymmetric wave function, (required by the Pauli exclusion principle), unless there were a hidden quantum
number. Oscar Greenberg noted this problem in 1964, suggesting that quarks should be para-fermions.[6]

Instead, six months later, Moo-Young Han and Yoichiro Nambu suggested the existence of three triplets of quarks to solve this
problem, but flavor and color intertwined in that model: ey did not commute.[7]

e modern concept of color completely commuting with all other charges and providing the strong force charge was
articulated in 1973, by William Bardeen, Harald Fritzsch, and Murray Gell-Mann.[8][9]

States outside the quark model

While the quark model is derivable from the theory of quantum chromodynamics, the structure of hadrons is more complicated
than this model allows. e full quantum mechanical wave function of any hadron must include virtual quark pairs as well as
virtual gluons, and allows for a variety of mixings. ere may be hadrons which lie outside the quark model. Among these are
the glueballs (which contain only valence gluons), hybrids (which contain valence quarks as well as gluons) and "exotic hadrons"
(such as tetraquarks or pentaquarks).

See also
▪ Subatomic particles
▪ Hadrons, baryons, mesons and quarks
▪ Exotic hadrons: exotic mesons and exotic baryons
▪ Quantum chromodynamics, flavor, the QCD vacuum

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Notes
1. Gell-Mann, M. (4 January 1964). "A Schematic Model of Baryons and Mesons". Physics Letters. 8 (3):
214–215. Bibcode:1964PhL.....8..214G (https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1964PhL.....8..214G).
doi:10.1016/S0031-9163(64)92001-3 (https://doi.org/10.1016%2FS0031-9163%2864%2992001-3).
2. Zweig, G. (17 January 1964). An SU(3) Model for Strong Interaction Symmetry and its Breaking (htt
p://cds.cern.ch/record/352337/files/CERN-TH-401.pdf) (PDF) (Report). CERN Report No.8182/TH.401.
3. Zweig, G. (1964). An SU(3) Model for Strong Interaction Symmetry and its Breaking: II (http://cds.cer
n.ch/record/570209/files/CERN-TH-412.pdf) (PDF) (Report). CERN Report No.8419/TH.412.
4. Petermann, A. (1965). "Propriétés de l'étrangeté et une formule de masse pour les mésons
vectoriels" [Strangeness properties and a mass formula for vector meson]. Nuclear Physics. 63 (2):
349–352. arXiv:1412.8681 (https://arxiv.org/abs/1412.8681). Bibcode:1965NucPh..63..349P (https://u
i.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1965NucPh..63..349P). doi:10.1016/0029-5582(65)90348-2 (https://doi.org/
10.1016%2F0029-5582%2865%2990348-2).
5. Petrov, Vladimir A. (June 23–27, 2014). Half a Century with QUARKS. XXX-th International Workshop
on High Energy Physics. Protvino, Moscow Oblast, Russia. arXiv:1412.8681 (https://arxiv.org/abs/141
2.8681).
6. Greenberg, O.W. (1964). "Spin and unitary-spin independence in a paraquark model of baryons and
mesons". Physical Review Letters. 13 (20): 598–602. Bibcode:1964PhRvL..13..598G (https://ui.adsab
s.harvard.edu/abs/1964PhRvL..13..598G). doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.13.598 (https://doi.org/10.1103%
2FPhysRevLett.13.598).
7. Han, M.Y.; Nambu, Y. (1965). "Three-triplet model with double SU(3) symmetry" (https://digital.library.
unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc1031342/). Physical Review B. 139 (4B): 1006.
Bibcode:1965PhRv..139.1006H (https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1965PhRv..139.1006H).
doi:10.1103/PhysRev.139.B1006 (https://doi.org/10.1103%2FPhysRev.139.B1006).
8. Bardeen, W.; Fritzsch, H.; Gell-Mann, M. (1973). "Light cone current algebra, π0 decay, and e+ e−
annihilation" (https://archive.org/details/scaleconformalsy0000unse/page/139). In Gatto, R. (ed.).
Scale and conformal symmetry in hadron physics. John Wiley & Sons. p. 139 (https://archive.org/deta
ils/scaleconformalsy0000unse/page/139). arXiv:hep-ph/0211388 (https://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ph/02113
88). Bibcode:2002hep.ph...11388B (https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2002hep.ph...11388B).
ISBN 0-471-29292-3.
9. Fritzsch, H.; Gell-Mann, M.; Leutwyler, H. (1973). "Advantages of the color octet gluon picture".
Physics Letters B. 47 (4): 365. Bibcode:1973PhLB...47..365F (https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1973
PhLB...47..365F). CiteSeerX 10.1.1.453.4712 (https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=1
0.1.1.453.4712). doi:10.1016/0370-2693(73)90625-4 (https://doi.org/10.1016%2F0370-2693%287
3%2990625-4).

References
▪ S. Eidelman et al. Particle Data Group (2004). "Review of Particle Physics" (http://pdg.lbl.gov/2004/re
views/quarkmodrpp.pdf) (PDF). Physics Letters B. 592 (1–4): 1. arXiv:astro-ph/0406663 (https://arxiv.
org/abs/astro-ph/0406663). Bibcode:2004PhLB..592....1P (https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2004PhL
B..592....1P). doi:10.1016/j.physletb.2004.06.001 (https://doi.org/10.1016%2Fj.physletb.2004.06.00
1).
▪ Lichtenberg, D B (1970). Unitary Symmetry and Elementary Particles. Academic Press.
ISBN 978-1483242729.
▪ Thomson, M A (2011), Lecture notes (http://www.hep.phy.cam.ac.uk/~thomson/partIIIparticles/hando
uts/Handout_7_2011.pdf)
▪ J.J.J. Kokkedee (1969). The quark model (https://archive.org/details/quarkmodel0000kokk). W. A.
Benjamin. ASIN B001RAVDIA (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B001RAVDIA).

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