Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Some "on"s in Physics

Here are some "on"s in Physics.
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Fundamental "on"s: Let me say very crudely that the fundamental "on"s can be classified as bosons and fermions.

Bosons are basically particles which obey Bose - Einstein statistics (i.e. particles with zero or integral spin) .
Fermions are particles which obey Fermi - Dirac statistics (i.e. particles with half integral spin).

It so happens that in nature, at a very fundamental level, bosons act as carriers of force between the fermions. The bosons which carry the four basic forces of nature are all "on"s, photon for electromagnetic force, massive vector bosons (W+- and Z0) for weak force, gluons for strong force and gravitons for gravitational force.

The fundamental particles in the theory called standard model also are "on"s, hadrons (crudely) and leptons. Well hadrons are not actually that much fundamental, they are of two types, baryons and mesons. Well it happens that mesons are bosons and hadrons are fermions :) , because baryons contain three quarks ( the most fundamental class of particles like leptons) and mesons contain two quarks. An example of a meson is the famous pion. Now proton and neutron , the nucleons at least most people know, are baryons. (But most other baryons are not "on"s.)

Now coming to the leptons, all charged ones are "on"s, electron, muon and tauon (but precisely tau particle), but the uncharged ones are all "ino"s. :) That is for another occasion.The anti particle of electron is an "on" with a unique name positron.

So much for the fundamental level. Now let us see some non fundamental "on"s.

Bohr magneton : physical constant corresponding to the magnetic moment of electrons; the magnitude of the magnetic dipole moment of an orbiting electron in the ground state.

Phonon : quantum of lattice vibration.

Soliton : self-reinforcing solitary wave (a wave packet or pulse) which keeps its shape while travelling at a constant speed. A cancellation of nonlinear and dispersive effects gives rise to solitons in a medium.

Exciton : a bound state of an electron and a hole (the absence of an electron) in insulators,semiconductors and some liquids.

Plasmon :quantum of plasma oscillation. Plasmons are collective oscillations of the free electron gas density, say, at optical frequencies.

Polariton : results from the strong coupling of electromagnetic waves with an electric or magnetic diploe carrying excitation.
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These are some of the "on"s I find in Physics. If you find more "on"s, please don't forget to comment. :)
Reference : Wikipedia 

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