Newly Discovered Particle Pentaquark: Properties

Newly Discovered Particle Pentaquark: Properties

Question: Scientists at the Large Hadron Collider have discovered a new particle called pentaquark. Discuss its properties.

- The discovery of a new particle called pentaquark has been announced by LHC scientists

- This particle was first predicted to exist during the 1960s

- During 1964, two physicists - Murray Gell Mann and George Zweig - independently proposed the existence of the subatomic particles known as quarks.

- They theorised the key properties of particles known as Mesons and Baryons is best explained through the existence of constituent particles

- While Zweig called this particle “aces” his counterpart called it quark

- This model accounts for other quark states such as pentaquark. This particle is composed of 4 quark and an antiquark

- Physicists investigated the manner a sub-atomic particle called Lambda b decayed - or transformed - into three other particles inside LHCb. The analysis revealed that intermediate states were often involved in the production of the three particles.

- These intermediate states have been named Pc(4450)+ and Pc(4380)+.

- An alternative layout for the pentaquark is one quark and one antiquark(meson) and three quarks (baryon) weakly bonded together

- Pentaquark represents a way to aggregate quarks and it is the fundamental constituent of ordinary protons and neutrons in a pattern never observed before over 50 years of experimental investigations

- Protons and neutrons are constructed from three kinds of quarks bound together but in practice, particles could be made of 5 quarks

- In 2002, scientists at the SPring-8 synchrotron in Harima, Japan announced that they had discovered a pentaquark, roughly 1.5 times heavier than a proton, inferring its existence from the debris of collisions between high-energy photons and neutrons.

- But none of the scientists could provide evidence for the state till now

Facts and Stats

- Much like the Higgs boson particle, pentaquark eluded scientists till its detection in the LHC

- This discovery which amounts to a new form of matter was made in 1 of 4 LHC experiments namely Hadron Collider’s LHCb experiment