Vector meson

In high energy physics, a vector meson is a total spin 1 and even parity.

Vector mesons have been seen in experiments since the 1960s, and are well known for their spectroscopic pattern of masses. Since the development of the pseudovector meson multiplets. This fact makes the vector mesons an excellent probe of the quark flavor content of other types of mesons, measured through the respective decay rates of non-vector mesons into the different types of vector mesons. Such experiments are very revealing for theorists who seek to determine the flavor content of mixed state mesons.

At higher masses, the vector mesons include charm and bottom quarks in their structure. In this realm, the radiative processes tend to stand out, with heavy tensor and scalar mesons decaying dominantly into vector mesons by photon emission. Pseudovector mesons transition by a similar process into pseudoscalar mesons. Because much of the spectrum of heavy mesons is tied by radiative processes to the vector mesons, one may think of vector mesons as forming a sort of backbone to the spectroscopy of mesons in general.

Examples

• rho meson, omega meson, phi meson, K*(892)
• J/Psi, D*
• Upsilon

See also

• List of mesons