A big hadron finder is also the Large Hadron Collider, (LHC). The Higgs boson was discovered in 2012 by the atom smasher at Geneva, Switzerland. This discovery is the last keystone to the current classification of elementary particle. The LHC also uncovered dozens of non-elementary particles, called hadronsthose made of quarks. They are similar to protons and neutrons.On the 29th of July, the latest hadron was unveiled by Ivan Polyakov, a particle physicist at Syracuse University in New York. It is a previously unknown exotic hasron that consists of four quarks. According to Patrick Koppenburg (a particle physicist at Nikhef in Amsterdam), this brought the LHC's hadron bounty to 62. These are all world-firsts, according to Koppenburg who is based at CERN (the European particle-physics laboratory which hosts the LHC).The standard model is a pantheon of particles that describes the basic building blocks and fundamental forces of matter. It contains six varieties of quarks, six antimatter counterparts, and many other elementary particles including electrons, photons, and many others. The standard model includes rules that explain how quarks create composite particles, called hadrons. The strong nuclear force is one of the four fundamental forces that holds the quarks together. The most common quarks are known as up and down. They can be combined with neutrons (one and two downs), and protons (2 ups and 1 down).Only protons have been found to be stable in isolation. Atomic nuclei can only make them stable if they are incorporated into other hadrons. Other hadrons are formed only briefly from collisions with other particles and then decay in fractions of seconds. The LHC causes high-energy head-on collisions between protons, creating new types of hadron.Quark quartetLHCb has spotted most of the LHC's new hadron types. The LHCb is one of four giant detectors that are located in the tunnel covering the LHC. Polyakov announced the particle. Polyakov and Vanya Belyaev, a collaborator at the Institute for Theoretical and Experimental Physics (Moscow) discovered the expected signature for a tetraquarka fourquark hadron called Tcc+.Tetraquarks, which are very rare, are composed of only two or three quarks. In 2003, the High Energy Accelerator Research Organization in Tsukuba (Japan) spotted the first tetraquark. LHCb has also seen many more. The new one is a rare find. The tetraquarks of the past were thought to have been pairs of quark doublets, attached to one another like atoms in molecules. However, Marek Karliner, theoretical physicist, believes that this latest one may be a real, tightly bound quadruplet. It's a huge deal. It's not a hadronic mole, but a new animal. Karliner, a professor at Tel Aviv University, Israel, said that it is the first of its type. He helped predict the existence in 2017 of a particle having the same properties of Tcc+.According to Belyaev, tetraquarks were likely created in the Universe's first moments. This was when all matter was compressed into a very tight space. However, physicists can create them again to test their theories on how particles interact with the strong nuclear force.Belyaev was shocked when the data showed the new particle properties. He said, "It's my mistake." The particles mass, which is approximately 4x that of a proton was found, was found to be nearly 3,000 times more accurate than the margin of error in the Higgs boson discovery. Belyaev also suggests that Tcc+ might have been found in data from the early days of the LHC. However, he and his LHCb coworkers didn't discover it until now due to a long list other particles.There are endless possibilitiesWe will continue to search for new hadrons. There are many combinations of quarks that can lead to hadrons. Karliner claims that there are 50 2-quark hadrons. All but one have been observed. There are 75 possible quark triplets and as many antiquark triplets. Nearly 50 of these have been observed. Karliner states that we are certain that all of them exist, but it is difficult to make.Furthermore, each quark combination can be classified as a distinct particle if it has a number of heavier excited states. These are distinguished by their spin speed. Many of these excited states have been discovered experimentally. Koppenburg is part of the LHCb Collaboration, and like Polyakov or Belyaev, we don't know how many more states may be hidden.He also questions whether all of these discoveries should be considered discrete particles. He says that I am becoming more convinced that we need to have a better definition for what a particle is.This article was published with permission on August 10, 2021.
