Hyperon


In particle physics, a hyperon is any baryon containing one or more strange quarks, but no charm, bottom, or top quark. This form of matter may exist in a stable form within the core of some neutron stars.

Properties and behavior of hyperons

Being baryons, all hyperons are fermions. That is, they have half-integer spin and obey Fermi–Dirac statistics. Hyperons all interact via the strong nuclear force, making them types of hadron. They are composed of three light quarks, at least one of which is a strange quark, which makes them strange baryons. Hyperons decay weakly with non-conserved parity.

List of hyperons

Notes:
It takes multiple flavor-changing weak decays for it to decay into a proton or neutron. Murray Gell-Mann's and Yuval Ne'eman's SU model predicted this hyperon's existence, mass and that it will only undergo weak decay processes. Experimental evidence for its existence was discovered in 1964 at Brookhaven National Laboratory. Further examples of its formation and observation using particle accelerators confirmed the SU model.

Hyperon research

The first research into hyperons happened in the 1950s, and spurred physicists on to the creation of an organized classification of particles. Today, research in this area is carried out on data taken at many facilities around the world, including CERN, Fermilab, SLAC, JLAB, Brookhaven National Laboratory, KEK, GSI and others. Physics topics include searches for CP violation, measurements of spin, studies of excited states, and hunts for exotic states such as pentaquarks and dibaryons.