Strong Interaction part 1

(Written:- February- March, 2025)

Strong interaction part 1

Abstract

The aim is to explore the strong interaction from an elementary physics perspective. We have learned about the atomic nuclei and its composition back in high school and now we further our exploration into the standard model of particle physics. Looking at the standard model, it is necessary to understand the proton and the neutron , the basic composition of which is formed by quarks. Quarks exchange gluons which are spin 1 particles that mediate the strong interaction. The field that studies quarks and gluons and how they facilitate strong interaction is called QCD or Quantum chromodynamics. The three colors of quarks , red, green and blue is why have we the name chromo. Just like electric charge is conserved for spin $1/2$ particles, similarly for quarks color charge is conserved(It is not analogous to electric charge). We move onto phases of matter of QCD, starting from symmetry breaking in the early universe to hadronization(confinement). We also take a deep dive into learning about a few quantum numbers like isospin, strangeness, charge and how they conserve strong interactions and overall flavor dynamics and flavor symmetry. Our investigation continues into how meson pairings are formed and hadron nomenclature on the basis of isospin. Major focus has been devoted towards understanding how isospin conserves strong interaction and by virtue of symmetry(strangeness vs charge in our case) come up with a way of classifying mesons and baryons.

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