A peek inside the box that could help solve a quantum mystery
An elusive particle that first formed in the hot, dense early universe has puzzled physicists for decades. Following its discovery in 2003, scientists began observing a slew of other strange objects tied to the millionths of a second after the Big Bang.
Appearing as ‘bumps’ in the data from high-energy experiments, these signals came to be known as short-lived ‘XYZ states.’ They defy the standard picture of particle behaviour and are a problem in contemporary physics, sparking several attempts to understand their mysterious nature.
But theorists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility in Virginia, with colleagues from the University of Cambridge, suggest the experimental data could be explained with fewer XYZ states, also called resonances, than currently claimed.
The team used a branch of quantum physics to compute the energy levels, or mass, of particles containing a specific ‘flavour’ of the subatomic building blocks known as quarks. Quarks, along with gluons, a force-carrying particle, make up the Strong Force, one of the four fundamental forces of nature.
