Talk:Particle decay

message: What happens after an elementary particle decays? Is it just gone?
:Yes, the initial particle is "just gone" - it has converted/transformed into its decay products. Jasondet (talk) 05:06, 13 September 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: That is not a fair assessment. There is quite a good understanding of why some particles are more stable than others. For example, particles that can decay via strong interactions are much less stable than particles that can decay via weak interactions (due to the larger coupling constant for strong interactions), and heavier particles are in general less stable due to the larger phase space available for decay. Jasondet (talk) 05:06, 13 September 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  What Happens After Particle Decay? 

message: My comment will be specifically concerning the sentence:
This process continues until stable particles (electrons, or up and down quarks) are produced.
which might mislead some readers into thinking that up and down quarks are the final stable state for quarks.  However this is not necessarily the case theoretically.  See:
[].
I suggest this can be rectified by inserting the word usually before "electrons, or up ..." to account for such exceptions.
Billyziege 20:33, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Quarks final state may not always be up or down. 

message: In the formula for the decay rate (I think equivalent to what is called 'decay width' in particle phyisics) there should be a symmetry factor of 1/k! for every k identical particles in the final state.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.174.17.101 (talk) 12:04, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Good catch, added. Jasondet (talk) 05:57, 13 September 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Missing symmetry factor? 

message: This article is using particle physics nomenclature which has a different meaning that particle decay in nuclear physics.  Both concepts are perfectly valid, of course, but the meaning is not the same.  I am presently editing the nuclear drip line page, so I may consider creating a nuclear particle decay page.  However, in that case, I'd like at least a note at the top that say "did you mean nuclear particle decay" or so.  More later, or I may do it myself.  Thanks.DAID (talk) 13:01, 6 April 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Disambiguation requested

message: Currently, there are four things wrong with the first paragraph:
* Composite particles can also decay. While there is a sentence clarifying that particle decay "is also used" to refer to hadron decays (as if hadron decays are usually called something else?), it would be better if the first paragraph were correct to begin with.
* Final states of decays can contain composite particles.
* Not all decays have an "intermediate particle" (consider decays of a real W or Z, or t \to W b or decays forbidden at tree-level). Given that the example is the (virtual) W boson in muon decay, it seems that this sentence was written by someone who takes Feynman diagrams too literally.
* The second sentence "an elementary particle becomes a different particle with less mass" implies that one of the decay products is somehow more associated with the parent particle than the others. If so, which of the photons in H \to \gamma \gamma does the Higgs become?
I'm aware of WP:DIY. I just want something to point to in the edit summary.
Dukwon (talk) 11:39, 8 December 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Introduction 

message: Should strong decay link here?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.139.254.117 (talk) 09:45, 8 January 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Strong decay? 

message: I thought proton and electron decay were hypothetical, yet the table lists a mean lifetime for them. It makes it seem like they do actually decay and it just would take a really long time. Maybe an asterisk would make this clearer. I would edit it but I don't actually know for myself whether these are hypothetical or not. Dimmerster (talk) 23:14, 9 May 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Electron and proton decay