I recently had question, can 2 elementary particles be "attached" together using Strong and weak nuclear forces to create a bound state. For example can Electron and some other stable elementary particle such as Strange Quark be formed to gather with electron orbiting the heavier particle similar to a atomic structure?
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Since electrons don't interact through the strong interaction, an electron-quark "atom" is on the face of it the same as an electron-proton atom. (Except maybe weak interaction decays, I'm not entirely sure.)
However: a free quark has never been observed in experiments, and it is widely believed - but not proved - that the theory of strong interactions does not allow free quarks at all. Instead, quarks bond in pairs or triplets. The most famous such particles are of course neutrons and protons. So in a sense not only can quarks form composite particles, they most likely have to.
Bound pairs of quarks have energy levels like atoms, but often the difference in energy is very large. It's the strong interaction after all. The energy difference can be so large that particle physicists have several names for particles that have the same constituent parts.
Robin Ekman
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