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Questions tagged [weak-interaction]

one of the four known fundamental forces of nature and the one responsible for beta-decay radioactivity. The weak interaction is very short-ranged and more weakly coupled than either the strong nuclear force or electromagnetism. At energy scales above the Z mass the weak and electromagnetic interactions are unified (that is subject to a unified mathematical treatment).

Carrier bosons

The weak force is mediated by the exchange of three massive bosons: $W^{\pm}$ (mass about 80.4 GeV) and $Z^0$ (mass 91.2 GeV).

Conservation laws

Uniquely among the known forces the weak interaction violates flavor conservation in both the quark and lepton sectors, violates parity in purely leptonic interaction and violates charge-parity in some hadronic decay channels.

484 questions
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Has the weak force ever been measured as a force?

Gravitational and electrostatic forces are everyday phenomenon, and continue to be tested by sophisticated experiments at various distances. Rutherford measured the electrostatic repulsion of alpha particles from nuclei. At higher incident energies…
uhoh
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Why can the $W^{+/-}$ particles change quarks of different generations, while the $Z^0$ only changes leptons of one generation?

A $W^{+/-}$ particle can change a quark from one generation into a quark of a different generation, as long as these quarks (obviously) differ 1 or -1 in electric charge. So an up quark ($+\frac 2 3$) can be changed in a strange quark ($-\frac 1 3$)…
Deschele Schilder
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When is the weak force triggered?

I've been trying to understand the weak force (very much at a layman's level), and I've seen a lot of descriptions that say more or less the same thing. But I've had difficulty tracking down an answer to one of my primary questions: when does the…
Jeff Calhoun
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Why is it so hard to find a heavy right-handed W boson?

I understand that nobody has detected the right-handed W boson yet and perhaps never will. Is it because of their short half-life (Could they actually decay?) or is it because of engineering limitations such as the size of magnets etc? Also if they…
user6760
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Weak Interaction and Strangeness transformation

Is there any processes involving weak interaction that preserve the strangeness for $S \neq 0$? I can't find an answer to it on net or anywhere else, generally it is true that weak interaction changes strangeness by 1 unit.
Aman pawar
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W+ and Z boson scattering($W^+ Z \rightarrow W^+ Z$)

In Matthew Schwarz QFT textbook on page 588-9, $W^+_L Z_L \rightarrow W^+_L Z_L$ was illustrated but the kinds of weak bosons are absent. The diagram of the problem is as follows: This is s-channel, so the time is flowing from left to the right.…
Liberty
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