4 ms·

I wonder if this principle can also be applied to nucleons. Protons and neutrons are each made up of 3 quarks. And there are some troubles in pinning down the r

I wonder if this principle can also be applied to nucleons. Protons and neutrons are each made up of 3 quarks. And there are some troubles in pinning down the radius of the proton. If Efimov scales apply to nucleons, this would imply that there are multiple scales in which quarks can arrange depending on the outside potential. This could explain the differences of measured proton radius depending on the used experimental setup. But I'm just wildly speculating here.

Panoramix 12y ago
This trick only works for bosons *Edit: I think. At any rate, these depths of physics are quite complex and not very intuitive, and this kind of discovery shows it is very easy to overlook things. A giant discovery could be looming in the horizon...
- anigbrowl 12y ago
  In the lab. The paper contemplates the possibilities for nucleons too - it's just harder for spin particles: http://www.uibk.ac.at/exphys/ultracold/projects/levt/efimov/SovJNucPhys12.589.efimov.pdf http://www.uibk.ac.at/exphys/ultracold/projects/levt/efimov/...
- evanb 12y ago
  Sort of. There are some tricks you can play with fermions (eg. align all of their spins) to get very analogous effects.
evanb 12y ago
It applies (in very rough approximation) to groups of nucleons, which is where it was first discovered. People observed that the nucleon/nucleon scattering length was surprisingly long for what they considered natural nuclear scales (or equivalently, that the deuteron was very weakly bound). The circumstance where the Efimov effect is mathematically exact is when the scattering length is infinite. Fermions in this circumstance are described as unitary. Sadly, the Efimov effect has nothing to do with the proton size puzzle. Source: IAANuclearPhysicist.