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Particle physics

Strangeness in the proton

Nature volume 544, pages 419–420 (2017)Cite this article

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The proton can contain pairs of elementary particles known as strange quarks. The contribution of these particles to the proton's electric-charge distribution and magnetic moment has been determined.

Elementary particles called quarks come in six flavours: up, down, charm, strange, top and bottom. This year marks the seventieth anniversary of the discovery of strange quarks in matter. This discovery set the foundation on which the quark model was developed1,2,3, providing us with the simple picture that the proton — and all conventional atomic nuclei — comprises only up and down quarks. On small scales, deep inside the proton, this simple picture has been superseded by one consisting of a range of quarks, antiquarks (the antiparticles of quarks) and gluons (the particles that bind quarks together). In principle, all six flavours of quark can be present. But viewing the proton from afar, the influence of the four 'hidden' flavours has been difficult to resolve. Writing in Physical Review Letters, Sufian et al.4 report the precise computation of the electric-charge distribution and magnetization associated with strange quarks in the proton.

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Figure 1: The proton's internal structure.

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  1. Ross D. Young is in the Department of Physics, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, SA 5005, Australia.,

    Ross D. Young

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  1. Ross D. Young
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Correspondence to Ross D. Young.

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Young, R. Strangeness in the proton. Nature 544, 419–420 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature21909

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