Composition |
|
---|---|
Statistics | Bosonic |
Family | Mesons |
Interactions | Strong, Weak, Gravitation, Electromagnetic |
Symbol | η , η′ |
Antiparticle | Self |
Discovered | Aihud Pevsner et al. (1961) |
Types | 2 |
Mass | η : 547.862±0.018 MeV/c2[1] η′ : 957.78±0.06 MeV/c2[1] |
Mean lifetime | η : (5.0±0.3)×10−19 s, η′ : (3.2±0.2)×10−21 s |
Decays into | |
Electric charge | 0 e |
Spin | 0 |
Isospin | 0 |
Hypercharge | 0 |
Parity | -1 |
C parity | +1 |
The eta (
η
) and eta prime meson (
η′
) are isosinglet mesons made of a mixture of up, down and strange quarks and their antiquarks. The charmed eta meson (
η
c) and bottom eta meson (
η
b) are similar forms of quarkonium; they have the same spin and parity as the (light)
η
defined, but are made of charm quarks and bottom quarks respectively. The top quark is too heavy to form a similar meson, due to its very fast decay.