Talk:Tau (particle)

message: yeah, so it's not actually called a tauon. It might be easier for you guys to separate it
from the wiki entries for greek letters etc but you've basically made a word up here. There's 
no greek letter 'electr' before you start going on about leptons and mesons ending in 'on'. 
I'm a particle physicist, i should know.
Speedy delete???
According to the history this page was moved to Tau (particle) and now we're moving it back again?
Edd 23:22, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, most of the articles linking to this particle do so via the Tauon redirect page. I've adjusted the remaining few articles so that all articles now point to Tauon. Check the template on Tau (particle) article - it refers to Tauon (which is a redirect to Tau (particle) and not Tau (particle) - so it remains linked when it should be bold. If we can move Tau (particle) to Tauon then all the redirects go away; and the template will finally work correctly. I'd suggest that the original move was a mistake - possibly by a person whose national article for this particle is Tau rather than Tauon. As such, the English page has probably laboured under a less common name. Ian Cairns 23:36, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)
replies: text:  Yup, seems logical enough. Edd 20:12, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)
replies: text:  Move completed. Thanks for your assistance. Ian Cairns 21:12, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)
replies: text:  "Seems logical enough", "probably laboured under a less common name", and speculation on the national origin of an editor are not sufficient criteria.  "Correct, and agrees with verifiable sources" would have been.  Unfortunately, the verifiable sources, such as particle physics textbooks and journal papers would support naming the page "Tau (particle)".  This is why I have listed the page for a requested move back.  The template and any linking pages can and should be changed as well. The Wilschon (talk) 17:05, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

text: It's not called the "tauon". It is called either the "tau" or the "tau lepton". As a reference I offer you Martin Perl's nobel prize citation, for example. On the Wikipedia page about Perl, someone had added a note "tauon" after the correct name "tau lepton". I had been wondering why this page was so strangely named since I first came to Wikipedia, and never bothered reading this talk page until now and discovering what had happened. Anyway I've removed every "tauon" I can find from Wikipedia. If necessary a note on the "tauon" name can be added here. --DannyWilde 15:15, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I think it's great that the tau's primary page is under "tau lepton", since that's by far the most common usage. But perhaps it's a bit overzealous to remove all references to "tauon". It's certainly not absent from the literature, and it does follow the standard "(foo) (lept/mes)on" --> "(foo)on" rule. I'm going to add a note on the subject at the top. -- Xerxes 16:09, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: A note on this page is enough, other references should be removed. Funnily enough I used to think the name was "tauon", I can't remember where I got the impression from. --DannyWilde 02:02, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I had a good look on the Google but I couldn't find any clues about where "tauon" comes from. Interestingly I found lots of pages by astronomers using the word "tauon".   I couldn't find any particle physicists using the word "tauon", although I found it being used on a couple of particle physics-related sites, for example in a speech by a non-physicist held on the SLAC site. Also, it appears in lots of these amateur guides to physics. Anyway, I have no idea where the "tauon" name comes from, but so far I see no evidence at all of its being used in particle physics. --DannyWilde 07:45, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: name

message: This might sound kind of ignorant, but what does the d in the Feynman diagram represent? I assume the anti-U is its antiparticle, but I don't know what U represents either. Please assist.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.18.10.18 (talk) 06:23, 31 December 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: You are right. the arrow in the other neutrino is also pointing in the wrong direction. Does anybody know how to fix this kind of image file? Dauto 06:47, 12 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: There's something wrong with the Decay section; the decay branching probabilities don't add up to 100% and there's a reference to a commented-out image being incorrect in the article text.  I've added the disputed-section template to the section until someone who understands what's going on can come and fix it. 75.15.155.179 (talk) 06:43, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  For reference, there are two diagrams at :Image:Feynman diagram of decay of tau lepton.svg and :Image:Tau-decays.png.png.  Time3000 (talk) 17:33, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I added :File:Tau-decay.png to the decay section. /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 10:32, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: The u-bar and the d are swapped: the quark should be the one with the arrow pointing forwards and the antiquark the one with the arrow pointing backwards. ― A._di_M.3rd Dramaout (formerly Army1987) 14:22, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: That is nit-picking. All arrows in this figure are pointing forward. Although this is not technically as in a real Feynman diagram, it is also how a RAL masterclass presents the decay. When particles are labeled as antiparticles, one can let the arrows point forward. This way, both experts and novices will not misunderstand. /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 17:42, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: It turns out that one of the three diagrams linked above had the arrow pointing in the usual direction and had the anti-up grouped with the other antiparticles. It's also an SVG, which is preferred over raster formats. I've swapped it in. --Christopher Thomas (talk) 19:18, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Feynman diagram

message: When did that page change its name from Tau lepton to tauon? The other name is a better choice.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dauto (talk • contribs) 22:21, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I may be wrong but I think  tau lepton  is the more modern usage. I won't fight you over that though. There are plenty of factually wrong or missleading statments in the WP High Energy pages. No need to argue about naming conventions. Dauto (talk) 16:26, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
replies: text:  Consistency is all very nice, but on a similar idea to your google search a search of the Web of Knowledge (scientific papers) gave 24 results for tauon and 1862 for tau lepton. Clearly the second is the most used by scientists. 14:22, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
replies: text:  IAA Particle Physicist.  Nobody ever says "tauon" in this field.  You rarely even hear "tau lepton".  By far the most common thing is simply "tau" (or even "τ"), as in "We're looking for Higgs going to a tau pair", or "we detect the τ in the three-prong decay channel".  Furthermore, a quick search on the arxiv (nearly all new papers are posted on the arxiv at some point) shows a grand total of 15 papers using the word "tauon", which I think is rather telling...  This page should be named  tau (particle) .  If you like, I can provide references to any number of textbooks, reference works, and articles using "tau" or "τ", for instance Cheng and Li ("τ").  The Wilschon (talk) 16:54, 3 July 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Page Name 

message: Theoretically shouldn't Tauon-Catalyzed fusion be possible just like Muon-catalyzed_fusion?  I would think it would cause fusion more readily because the Tauon should be 3477 times closer the the nucleus than an election, as opposed to the Muon's 207 times closer.  Maybe this should get a mention?  Ittiz (talk) 15:05, 1 May 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm not an expert on fusion, but I would expect the reason it isn't pursued is twofold: the high decay rate of the tau and the difficulty in reliably producing taus (esp. as compared with producing muons) The Wilschon (talk) 16:42, 3 July 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Makes sense. What do you think would be appropriate for Wikipedia, a redirect to muon-catalyzed fusion and create a section discussion tauon-catalyzed fusion (with refs, of course)?Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 19:57, 3 July 2009 (UTC)
replies: text:  Sure, I guess.  Provided, of course, that there are any refs.  I would be surprised to find any because, to the best of my knowledge (admittedly fusion physics is not my subfield), it is not an active area of research at all. The Wilschon (talk) 03:07, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Tauon-Catalyzed Fusion 

message: :The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 
The result of the move request was: There appears to be enough support for a move, but the choice of name varies.  Based on the support !votes, the most popular seems to be Tau (particle) - which is when I have moved it to. The second move was much easier. As an "outsider", I can see the points made that only physicists are likely to be searching for the article, so it's better to go with whatever is the real (i.e. commonname) usage. Not only will redirects will take care of any reader typing "Talon", but they will probably also notice the page name as it comes up by the time they have typed "tau"  Ronhjones  (Talk) 19:42, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Tauon → Tau lepton — The term 'tauon' is hardly used in physics literature to refer to the heaviest lepton (see, for example tauon vs tau lepton), and is on the verge of being an invented name on Wikipedia. Physics textsHalzen and Martin. Quarks and Leptons.  Canada: John Wiley and Sons inc, 1984.Griffiths, D. Introduction to Elementary Particles. Weinheim: Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co, 2008 , popular science booksGreene, B.  The Elegant Universe.  New York: Vintage Books, 2000, and the media all predominantly use 'tau' or 'tau lepton'. Uniformity of the charged lepton names on Wikipedia hardly justifies naming an article based on a rarely used term.  TriTertButoxy (talk) 16:39, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

text: The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move.  Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.
I too object to the move. (I was away last week, so I could not participate in the discussion). Since there is no consensus for this, I'm reverting. Also, I would note that that muons are referred to as "mus" just as tauons are referred to as "taus". The reason is simply that in physics, it's common to simply pronounce the symbol for the names. νe is a "nu e" rather than a "electron neutrino" or "e + μ" is "e + mu" rather than "electron + muon". The rest is per Skippy (articles are more accessible to non-particle physicist if we write in plainspeak rather than in professional jargon). Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 11:02, 28 June 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Move request 2010 

message: * Is the tau neutrino a tau lepton? Or is it instead a tau-related lepton that is not a tau lepton? Hcobb (talk) 14:40, 26 September 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[tau lepton]] 

message: (Original text copied from "user talk:Headbomb#tau edit reverts".)  Nicole Sharp (talk) 22:01, 15 March 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  edit reverts 

message: Reviewing Arxiv.org, the usage of "tau lepton" to refer to the "tau particle" is overwhelming, so I am creating a wikipoll here to see what Wikipedia thinks.  Use  if you think that the usage of "tau lepton" should be avoided on Wikipedia since it may cause confusion for lay readers between the tau particle and the tau neutrino (which are both leptons), or  if you disagree.  Feel free to add any additional comments or citations.  Nicole Sharp (talk) 22:56, 15 March 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  usage