Table of Contents

• Quarkonium
• Meson
• Baryon

Quarkonium

• Quarkonium: Quark + Onium
  • Onium: A bound state of a particle and its antiparticle.
  • Thus, the word, Quarkonium, refers to a bound state of a quark and an antiquark.
  • Similarly, we have other words: charmonium, bottomonium, positronium, etc.
• A quarkonium is a flavorless meson whose constituents are a quark and its antiquark.
• Quarkonium states are important in the study of quantum chromodynamics, the theory of the strong nuclear force. Quarkonium states are also important in the study of heavy quark physics, as they provide a laboratory for testing perturbative and nonperturbative aspects of quantum chromodynamics.

Meson

• A hadron composed of one quark and one antiquark, bound together by the strong interaction, known as meson.
• As it is composed of quark-antiquark pairs, it has a baryon number of 0.

Baryon

• A hadron composed of three quarks, bound together by the strong interaction, known as baryon.
• As it is composed of three quarks, it has a baryon number of 1.