Article
Article
Meson
Article By:
Close, Frank E. Rudolf Peierls Centre for Theoretical Physics, Oxford University, Oxford, United Kingdom.
Last reviewed:June 2020
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1036/1097-8542.416700
Strongly interacting particles are either baryons or mesons. Baryons, such as the proton and neutron, have half-integer spins and are fermions, whereas mesons are bosons with integer spin. The lightest meson is the pion, denoted π, which was originally predicted to exist as the carrier of the powerful force that grips the protons and neutrons within atomic nuclei. See also: Baryon; Quantum statistics; Spin (quantum mechanics); Strong nuclear interactions
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