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In particle physics, a lepton is an elementary particle of half-integer spin ( spin 1 2 ) that does not undergo strong interactions. [1] Two main classes of leptons exist: charged leptons (also known as the electron -like leptons or muons), including the electron, muon, and tauon, and neutral leptons, better known as neutrinos.
All leptons carry a lepton number L = 1. In addition, leptons carry weak isospin, T 3, which is − 1 / 2 for the three charged leptons (i.e. electron, muon and tau) and + 1 / 2 for the three associated neutrinos. Each doublet of a charged lepton and a neutrino consisting of opposite T 3 are said to constitute one generation of ...
In one type of charged current interaction, a charged lepton (such as an electron or a muon, having a charge of −1) can absorb a W + boson (a particle with a charge of +1) and be thereby converted into a corresponding neutrino (with a charge of 0), where the type ("flavour") of neutrino (electron ν e , muon ν μ , or tau ν τ ) is the same ...
Generation (particle physics) In particle physics, a generation or family is a division of the elementary particles. Between generations, particles differ by their flavour quantum number and mass, but their electric and strong interactions are identical. There are three generations according to the Standard Model of particle physics.
Tau (particle) The tau ( τ ), also called the tau lepton, tau particle, tauon or tau electron, is an elementary particle similar to the electron, with negative electric charge and a spin of 1 2 . Like the electron, the muon, and the three neutrinos, the tau is a lepton, and like all elementary particles with half-integer spin, the tau ...
Electrons have the lowest mass of any charged lepton (or electrically charged particle of any type) and belong to the first-generation of fundamental particles. [77] The second and third generation contain charged leptons, the muon and the tau , which are identical to the electron in charge, spin and interactions , but are more massive.
Lepton number is an additive quantum number, so its sum is preserved in interactions (as opposed to multiplicative quantum numbers such as parity, where the product is preserved instead). The lepton number is defined by where. n ℓ {\displaystyle n_ {\ell }\quad } is the number of leptons and. n ℓ ¯ {\displaystyle n_ {\overline {\ell }}\quad }
Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) University of Liverpool. Doctoral advisor. I. I. Rabi. Doctoral students. Melissa Franklin, Samuel C. C. Ting. Martin Lewis Perl (June 24, 1927 – September 30, 2014) was an American chemical engineer and physicist who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1995 for his discovery of the tau lepton .