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I am going over old exam and am not understanding the logic behind the answer given in the mark-scheme.

A beam of protons and antiprotons attain energies of 1400 GeV in a synchrotron. Why is it that, even at the very high energies of this particle beam, the collisions are unlikely to lead to the creation of a single unbound quark.

The mark-scheme, very confusingly, answer this as follows:

as quarks separate the force between them is constant;

(so) energy required to release single quark increases with distance;

these energies exceed the threshold for meson (pair) production;

Each part, separated by a semicolon, gives one point (so that you understand why its so oddly formatted).

I get that we should simply know that the energy transferred between the quarks gets bigger with distance (work = force * distance), and that force is constant, but why does it jump to the conclusion that these energies exceed what we already have? And why is the meson (pair) production relevant?

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1 Answers1

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The Quarks are bound together in a proton through the Strong Force. So to separate them you need to add enough energy to counter the Strong Force. But this amount of energy needed to separate them will create a new Quark-anti_Quark pair through $E=mc^2$ (energy equals mass).

Harish Chandra Rajpoot
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