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How does the strong force bind neutrons to protons? Is it connecting the quarks inside the proton with those of the neutron?
by Pet_Ant 4y ago
How does the strong force bind neutrons to protons? Is it connecting the quarks inside the proton with those of the neutron?
- photochemsyn 4y agoThat's the role the meson (a quark-antiquark pair particle) carries out, but I agree it's confusing. Here's a question from physics stack exchange (without any really clear answers, other than "go look up 'residual strong force'", not very helpful) that spells it out: > "I just read somewhere that both gluons and mesons transmit the strong force, gluons between quarks inside hadrons, but mesons between nucleons. I thought that the strong force would have one field, and one associated particle, whether inside hadrons, or between nucleons"
- Pet_Ant 4y agohttps://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/296457/gluons-and-mesons https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/296457/gluons-an...
- yccs27 4y agoHow nucleons (neutrons and protons) are bound together is similar to a molecule. If they are close enough, they can 'share' their constituent quarks. You can calculate the interaction by a feynman diagram where the two nucleons exchange one quark in each direction. This is technically the same as one nucleon sending and the other absorbing a quark-antiquark pair, which is why physicists like to say that the nucleon attraction is transmitted by mesons (quark-antiquark pairs). Of course fundamentally the strong force still facilitates the whole interaction, as it's the one preventing nucleons from just falling apart into quarks.