Pion Decay
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Notice: this page is under construction

Neutral Pion Decays

Almost all neutral pions are observed1 to decay into pairs of photons

$\pi^{\circ} \to 2\gamma$

We suppose this process is triggered by the absorption of an athereal weak quantum $\hat{\sf{w}}$ followed by the emission of second weak particle with an imaginary mass. The outgoing weak quantum presumably carries off some debris without being detected (yet). This can be written as

$\pi^{\circ} + \hat{\sf{w}} \to \gamma_{\pi 1} + \gamma_{\pi 2} + \sf{w} ( \pi^{\circ} )$

The indicated photons (see table below) are just examples. They are not unique decay products and quarks may be distributed in a variety of ways that yield similar but slightly different photons. For a spreadsheet giving more detail about quark coefficients and other particle characteristics click here.

Charged Pion Decays

Virtually all charged pions exhibit2 decays involving muons and neutrinos in patterns like

$\pi^{+} \to \mu^{+} + \nu_{\mu}$

We model this processes by assuming the absorption of a pionic photon $\gamma _{\pi}$ followed by the emission of a weak quantum with an imaginary mass that presumably carries away some decay products without being detected

$\sf{\pi}^{+} + \sf{\gamma}_{\pi} \to \sf{\mu}^{+} + \nu_{\mu} + \sf{w} ( \pi^{+} )$

This process conserves quarks, and therefore also other particle characteristics like lepton number and momentum.


Quark Coefficients
photon u d e g m a t b s c u d e g m a t b s c
$\gamma _{\sf{\pi}}$ 4 1 2 4 1 2
$\gamma _{\sf{e}}$ 4 4 4 4 4 4
$\gamma _{\pi 1}$ 4 25 2 25 1 1 2 1 4 25 2 25 1 1 2 1
$\gamma _{\pi 2}$ 4 27 3 26 1 1 3 1 4 27 3 26 1 1 3 1
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