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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.
They include the quarks and leptons, as well as any composite particles consisting of an odd number of these, such as all baryons and many atoms and nuclei. Fermions have half-integer spin; for all known elementary fermions this is 1 / 2 .
In particle physics, lepton number (historically also called lepton charge) [1] is a conserved quantum number representing the difference between the number of leptons and the number of antileptons in an elementary particle reaction. [2]
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 ...
Each generation contains two types of leptons and two types of quarks. The two leptons may be classified into one with electric charge −1 (electron-like) and neutral (neutrino); the two quarks may be classified into one with charge − 1 ⁄ 3 (down-type) and one with charge + 2 ⁄ 3 (up-type).
The water-based detectors Kamiokande II and IMB detected 11 and 8 antineutrinos (lepton number = −1) of thermal origin, [103] respectively, while the scintillator-based Baksan detector found 5 neutrinos (lepton number = +1) of either thermal or electron-capture origin, in a burst less than 13 seconds long. The neutrino signal from the ...
The tau (τ), also called the tau lepton, tau particle or tauon, 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 has a corresponding antiparticle of opposite charge but equal mass and spin.
The set of particles believed today to be elementary is known as the Standard Model and includes quarks, bosons and leptons. The term "subnuclear zoo" was coined or popularized by Robert Oppenheimer in 1956 at the VI Rochester International Conference on High Energy Physics. [3]