Composition | |
---|---|
Statistics | Bosonic |
Family | Mesons |
Interactions | Strong, weak, electromagnetic, gravity |
Symbol | ω |
Antiparticle | Self |
Theorized | Yoichiro Nambu[1] (1957) |
Discovered | Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (1961)[2][3] |
Types | 1 |
Mass | 782.66±0.13 MeV/c2 |
Mean lifetime | (7.58±0.11)×10−23 s |
Decays into | π+ + π0 + π− or π0 + γ |
Electric charge | 0 e |
Spin | 1 |
Isospin | 0 |
Hypercharge | 0 |
Parity | −1 |
C parity | −1 |
The omega meson (
ω
) is a flavourless meson formed from a superposition of an up quark–antiquark and a down quark–antiquark pair. It is part of the vector meson nonet[4][5] and mediates the nuclear force along with pions and rho mesons.
The most common decay mode for the ω meson is
π+
π0
π−
at 89.2±0.7%, followed by
π0
γ
at 8.34±0.26%.[6]
Particle name | Particle symbol |
Antiparticle symbol |
Quark content |
Rest mass (MeV/c2) | IG | JPC | S | C | B' | Mean lifetime (s) | Commonly decays to (>5% of decays) |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Omega meson[6] | ω (782) |
Self | 782.66 ± 0.13 | 0− | 1−− | 0 | 0 | 0 | (7.58±0.11)×10−23 s | π+ + π0 + π− or π0 + γ |
The quark composition of the
ω
meson can be thought of as a mix between
u
u
,
d
d
and
s
s
states, but it is very nearly a pure symmetric
u
u
-
d
d
state. This can be shown by deconstructing the wave function of the
ω
into its component parts. We see that the
ω
and
ϕ
mesons are mixtures of the SU(3) wave functions as follows.[7]
where
The mixing angle at which the components decouple completely can be calculated to be , which almost corresponds to the actual value calculated from the masses of 35°. Therefore, the
ω
meson is nearly a pure symmetric
u
u
-
d
d
state.