ISCID Encyclopedia of Science and Philosophy - BETA

Make Entry -- Become an Editor -- Most Popular: (10, 25, 50, 75, 100)

   Help

Lepton

A lepton is a fermion with a spin of 1/2 that does not experience the strong nuclear force, thus leptons are elementary particles distinct from the other fermion family known as quarks. The three flavors of leptons are the electron, the muon and the tau, along with their pairs (neutrino) and antiparticles (positron and electron antineutrino).

Each pair of particles in a flavor of lepton is called a weak couplet. While electrons muons and tau each have mass (the electron is the least massive charged elementary particle), neutrinos were predicted to be massless and have no electric charge. The electron, muon and tau neutrinos are now thought to contain some negligible mass.


Web Resources On Lepton

Lepton
Lepton (Wikipedia)


Book Resources On Lepton

Dynamics of the Standard Model by John F. Donoghue
The Rise of the Standard Model: A History of Particle Physics from 1964 to 1979 by Lillian Hoddeson et al.
The Standard Model: A Primer by Cliff Burgess and Guy Moore

Related Topics

Fermion

Unpaired Spin

Standard Model


Cite Entry



 

 

Site Maps: Most Recent | Clusters | Browse
New: Graduate Student Job Opportunity



ISCID - International Society For Complexity, Information, and Design about iscid iscid fellows pcid iscid archive iscid membership Bibliography iscid essay contests ISCID Conferences iscid contact information iscid iscid member services iscid news brainstorms Donations
All content
© 2001-2005 ISCID

Link to ISCID
ISCID - International Society For Complexity, Information, and Design Logo