noun
quark
KWARK/kwɑːrk/
An elementary particle that combines with others to form protons, neutrons, and other hadrons.
A proton contains two up quarks and one down quark.
Etymology
Gell-Mann took the particle’s name from a word in Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, though he said its sound was already in his head. German Quark, “curds, rubbish,” has only been proposed as the ultimate inspiration.
In context
have a Yukawa coupling here, which is the capital phi, and the diagonalization of MAB is gotten to by finding two unitary matrices that separate the uptype and the downtype quark sectors.
More examples
- A neutron contains one up quark and two down quarks.
- Physicists classify quarks into six types, called flavors.
- The strong force binds quarks together inside protons.
Forms
quark · quarks