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TR094
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- TL;DR Summary
- how much energy do you need to split up a proton?
is it even possible to split pu a proton and how much energy would it take to do that? i heard that it requires so much that it would make new a quark.
I see from your New Member Introduction post that you are still in high school, and very interested in particle physics. Good for you.TR094 said:TL;DR Summary: how much energy do you need to split up a proton?
is it even possible to split pu a proton and how much energy would it take to do that? i heard that it requires so much that it would make new a quark.
like is it possible to take a quark out of a proton? like an up quarkVanadium 50 said:Since there is no such thing as half a proton, you'll have to better define what you mean by "splitting: one in order to have a productive discussion.
No. A free quark would have non-trivial color charge. QCD is confining, meaning such states cannot be isolated.TR094 said:like is it possible to take a quark out of a proton? like an up quark
As a side note, you could try my "beginners' guide to baryons", which might give you a flavour of particle physics:TR094 said:TL;DR Summary: how much energy do you need to split up a proton?
is it even possible to split pu a proton and how much energy would it take to do that? i heard that it requires so much that it would make new a quark.
Thanks, I'll look into it!PeroK said:As a side note, you could try my "beginners' guide to baryons", which might give you a flavour of particle physics:
https://www.physicsforums.com/insights/a-beginners-guide-to-baryons/
TR094 said:TL;DR Summary: how much energy do you need to split up a proton?
is it even possible to split pu a proton and how much energy would it take to do that? i heard that it requires so much that it would make new a quark.
Deconfinement In Quark-Gluon PlasmaOrodruin said:No. A free quark would have non-trivial color charge. QCD is confining, meaning such states cannot be isolated.
Thx so much! Oh yeah where was the tiny amount of qgp made?ohwilleke said:Deconfinement In Quark-Gluon Plasma
QCD (quantum chromodynamics, which is the physics of the strong force) confines all quarks and gluons into strong force bound systems called hadrons up to a certain threshold of energy.
All hadrons are naturally unstable except protons and bound neutrons, which are stable indefinitely. Free neutrons have a mean lifetime of about 15 minutes. All other hadrons have mean lifetimes before they naturally decay into something else on the order of microseconds to something on the order of 10-24 seconds.
If you apply enough energy, protons and other hadrons in a system can dissolve into what is called a "quark-gluon plasma" is deconfined quarks and gluons, and as noted in the link: "the formation of a quark–gluon plasma occurs at the temperature of T ≈ 150–160 MeV, the Hagedorn temperature, and an energy density of ≈ 0.4–1 GeV/fm3." It takes beam strengths vastly greater than 1-2 GeV to get that energy density, something on the order of the mid-TeV energy beam strength.
CERN claims to have created such as state for the first time in the year 2000. The only experimental facilities currently capable of creating quark-gluon plasma the Large Hadron Collider at CERN and Brookhaven National Laboratory's Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider.
Quark-gluon plasma, a.k.a. QGP, is unstable and hadronizes as it cools below the Hagedorn temperature. Only a tiny amount of it has been created in human history and the QCP created has been extremely short-lived.
QGP requires conditions too extreme to be created naturally in the post-Big Bang universe (after the first hour or two, or even less) by any known natural means.
Disrupting Protons To Make New Particles
Far less proton-proton collision energy is needed to lead to a high energy physics event that produces end products that are something other than two protons (some combination of leptons like electrons, muons, and neutrinos, photons, and other hadrons, including hadrons more massive than the protons that were in the initial state, since their kinetic energy can be converted into mass), which could also credibly be described as splitting a proton.
The first experiment to accelerate a proton to break up an atomic nucleus was by Cockroft and Walton in 1932, but that only broke up a residual nuclear force bond between particles in a meta-stable uranium atom. Over time, colliders and their immediate predecessor technologies grew more powerful (from the link in this paragraph):
View attachment 336653
View attachment 336654
Proton-proton colliders starting in the 1960s were finally reaching a point where the collision could produce something other than two protons afterwards on a consistent basis, although there may have been examples of this earlier (in the 1950s) at somewhat lower energies (10s to 100s of MeVs) that I have missed in a brief review.
Brookhaven is on the eastern part of Long Island near New York City.TR094 said:Thx so much! Oh yeah where was the tiny amount of qgp made?
I mean, yes and no, if so you could equally well say you saw free gluons because you did deep-inelastic scattering.ohwilleke said:Deconfinement In Quark-Gluon Plasma
QCD (quantum chromodynamics, which is the physics of the strong force) confines all quarks and gluons into strong force bound systems called hadrons up to a certain threshold of energy.
All hadrons are naturally unstable except protons and bound neutrons, which are stable indefinitely. Free neutrons have a mean lifetime of about 15 minutes. All other hadrons have mean lifetimes before they naturally decay into something else on the order of microseconds to something on the order of 10-24 seconds.
If you apply enough energy, protons and other hadrons in a system can dissolve into what is called a "quark-gluon plasma", which is made up of deconfined quarks and gluons, and as noted in the link: "the formation of a quark–gluon plasma occurs at the temperature of T ≈ 150–160 MeV, the Hagedorn temperature, and an energy density of ≈ 0.4–1 GeV/fm3." It takes beam strengths vastly greater than 1-2 GeV to get that energy density, realistically, something on the order of low to mid-TeV energy beam strength.
CERN claims to have created such as state for the first time in the year 2000. The only experimental facilities currently capable of creating quark-gluon plasma the Large Hadron Collider at CERN and Brookhaven National Laboratory's Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider.
Quark-gluon plasma, a.k.a. QGP, is unstable and hadronizes (i.e. breaks up into confined quarks and gluons in hadrons) as it cools below the Hagedorn temperature. Only a tiny amount of it has been created in human history and the QCP created has been extremely short-lived.
QGP requires conditions too extreme to be created naturally in the post-Big Bang universe (after the first hour or two, or perhaps even less) by any known natural means.
Disrupting Protons To Make New Particles
Far less proton-proton collision energy is needed to lead to a high energy physics event that produces end products that are something other than two protons (some combination of leptons like electrons, muons, taus, and neutrinos, photons, and other hadrons, including hadrons more massive than the protons that were in the initial state, since their kinetic energy can be converted into mass), which could also credibly be described as splitting a proton.
The first experiment to accelerate a proton to break up an atomic nucleus was by Cockroft and Walton in 1932, but that only broke up a residual nuclear force bond between particles in a meta-stable uranium atom. Over time, colliders and their immediate predecessor technologies grew more powerful (from the link in this paragraph):
View attachment 336653
View attachment 336654
Proton-proton colliders starting in the 1960s were finally reaching a point where the collision could produce something other than two protons afterwards on a consistent basis, although there may have been examples of this earlier (in the 1950s) at somewhat lower energies (10s to 100s of MeVs) that I have missed in a brief review.
Maybe so. Deep-inelastic scattering usually isn't described in that way, while QGP is almost always described that way, but it is a fair point and to some extent boils down the exactly how "free" is defined.Orodruin said:you could equally well say you saw free gluons because you did deep-inelastic scattering.
Did you mean to say "no bigger than a nucleon"? A nucleus of U-238, for example, could be much bigger than a proton.Vanadium 50 said:Despite that voluminous post, a QGP absolutely does not eject a quark from a proton or otherwise "split" a proton. The size of a QGPO is no bigger than a nucleus, and actually because of Lorentz contraction, smaller.
Which in QCD is expected to be infinite.ohwilleke said:Deconfinement In Quark-Gluon Plasma
QCD (quantum chromodynamics, which is the physics of the strong force) confines all quarks and gluons into strong force bound systems called hadrons up to a certain threshold of energy.
How do you define temperature? If two protons collide at total energy 300 MeV (150 MeV per particle), what is their temperature?ohwilleke said:All hadrons are naturally unstable except protons and bound neutrons, which are stable indefinitely. Free neutrons have a mean lifetime of about 15 minutes. All other hadrons have mean lifetimes before they naturally decay into something else that ranges from on the order of microseconds to something on the order of 10-24 seconds.
If you apply enough energy, protons and other hadrons in a system can dissolve into what is called a "quark-gluon plasma", which is made up of deconfined quarks and gluons, and as noted in the link: "the formation of a quark–gluon plasma occurs at the temperature of T ≈ 150–160 MeV, the Hagedorn temperature, and an energy density of ≈ 0.4–1 GeV/fm3." It takes beam strengths vastly greater than 1-2 GeV to get that energy density, realistically, something on the order of low to mid-TeV energy beam strength (more than a thousand times greater).
High energy collisions go on all the time, in cosmic rays.ohwilleke said:Quark-gluon plasma, a.k.a. QGP, is unstable and hadronizes (i.e. breaks up into confined quarks and gluons in hadrons) as it cools below the Hagedorn temperature. Only a tiny amount of it has been created in human history and the QCP created has been extremely short-lived.
QGP requires conditions too extreme to be created naturally in the post-Big Bang universe (after the first hour or two, or perhaps even less) by any known natural means.
There is a trivial way of producing "something other than two protons afterwards" - namely two protons and one photon (bremsstrahlung). No threshold energy (it goes on all energies to infrared and radio waves).ohwilleke said:Disrupting Protons To Make New Particles
Far less proton-proton collision energy is needed to lead to a high energy physics event that produces end products that are something other than two protons (some combination of leptons like electrons, muons, taus, and neutrinos, photons, and other hadrons, including hadrons more massive than the protons that were in the initial state, since their kinetic energy can be converted into mass), which could also credibly be described as splitting a proton.
The first experiment to accelerate a proton to break up an atomic nucleus was by Cockroft and Walton in 1932, but that only broke up a residual nuclear force bond between particles in a meta-stable uranium atom. Over time, colliders and their immediate predecessor technologies grew more powerful (from the link in this paragraph):
Proton-proton colliders starting in the 1960s were finally reaching a point where the collision could produce something other than two protons afterwards on a consistent basis, although there may have been examples of this earlier (in the 1950s) at somewhat lower energies (10s to 100s of MeVs) that I have missed in a brief review.
Do you dispute that quark-gluon plasma is a thing?snorkack said:Which in QCD is expected to be infinite.
There are a standard means of conversion that is basically a function of kinetic energy per volume.snorkack said:How do you define temperature? If two protons collide at total energy 300 MeV (150 MeV per particle), what is their temperature?
Not with the energy density necessary to produce QGP.snorkack said:High energy collisions go on all the time, in cosmic rays.
Yeah, that is a trivial exception.snorkack said:There is a trivial way of producing "something other than two protons afterwards" - namely two protons and one photon (bremsstrahlung). No threshold energy (it goes on all energies to infrared and radio waves).
So what?snorkack said:can you identify which two of the three outgoing protons were the original incoming ones, and which one is the one newly created as pair of the antiproton? They are indistinguishable particles.