I read that neutron and protons are attracted through exchanging pions between each other. However, as far as I understand, they are just exchanging a meson, not any force carriers. What causes them to bind together?
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Bear in mind that they're virtual pions. https://physics.stackexchange.com/a/339841/123208 – PM 2Ring Feb 28 '24 at 01:13
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The pions are spin-0 bosons, which in, say, $\phi^4$ theory are force carriers. Just ignore the fact that they’re composite, because it isn’t relevant. – Ghoster Feb 28 '24 at 01:41
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5Do these answer your question? How Do Pions Mediate The Residual Strong Force?, Gluons pions and the strong nuclear force, Can a composite boson like the pion be an exchange particle for the strong nuclear force?. – David Bailey Feb 28 '24 at 02:17
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My take on this is as follows. Experts! *Please weigh in and if necessary stop me from propagating garbage. *I will delete as required.
Quarks that are far apart attract one another strongly, and they buzz around inside protons and neutrons. This means that there is a probability that a quark in one proton will for example eventually "see" another quark in a neighboring neutron, throw some gluons back and forth for an instant between them, and thereby establish an attractive force between the two composite particles for that instant.
And for that instant, while they are "seeing" each other, I consider those two quarks to constitute the fleeting existence of a nucleon consisting of two quarks which can be thought of as the force mediator between the proton and neutron in this example. .
niels nielsen
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