Talk:Hyperon
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[edit] CERN
CERN (Centre Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire) is another huge laboratory that uses the most powerful particle accelerators for the study of matter.
Yes I saw that omission, but didn't fix it. I do remember reading at one time that CERN's budget was several times Fermilab's, and since the SSC was cancelled, I suppose it must be the main world laboratory, but I have not really been following it recently. I will try to help the wording. David R. Ingham 01:50, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
(Actually the circular accelerators cross the border between France and Switzerland, but the protons are not required to stop for customs, because that would make too much bremsstrahlung LOL.)
- The question of whose accelerator is biggest is totally irrelevant to the question of who is studying hyperons. You don't need a big accelerator to produce them. Does anybody actually know which lab is more focused on hyperon research? -- Xerxes 23:21, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
Neither CERN nor Fermilab is primarily focused on hyperon research, although both are involved in it. I'd say Fermilab has done more work in the area recently -- it hosted the E687 and E831 (FOCUS), E781 (SELEX) and E871 (HyperCP) experiments, although none of those is taking data any more. Experiments at other labs have also done work on hyperons -- even the e+e- B-factories have shown results in this area. So I think it's a bit dangerous to say that lab X is *the* place for hyperons, and a bit impractical to try and list every experiment that's worked on them. It would be better just to say that many experiments are studying or have studied them and give a couple of examples. Physicsdog 07:56, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
[edit] charmed hyperons
While I edited the article mentioning that hyperons don't have heavy quark content, I know of a bunch of places where people refer to charmed hyperons. I think it would be nice to have some opinions on this matter, given that the term probably originated in the days before the heavy quarks were identified and there does not appear to be a complete consensus what this term exactly refers to. (Therefore my edit might not be very correct.) Erkcan 17:28, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
I asked one of our baryon old-timers about this. He explained that the term "hyperon" had been coined well before the quark model (and presumably before strangeness was understood as a quantum number). It originally referred to any (narrow?) baryon state which was heavier than a proton but lighter than a deuteron, i.e. light Lambda, Xi and Omega baryons but not things like Deltas or the phi. That exact definition doesn't work so well now -- charm wasn't discovered back then, and neither were heavier resonances like the Omega(2250) -- but I think the intention was to refer to Lambda, Xi, and Omega states with no heavy flavour. I'd say that's how it's most commonly used in the literature today. Physicsdog 02:25, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
