A three-body force is a

force In physics, a force is an influence that can change the motion of an object. A force can cause an object with mass to change its velocity (e.g. moving from a state of rest), i.e., to accelerate. Force can also be described intuitively as a p ...

that does not exist in a system of two objects but appears in a three-body system. In general, if the behaviour of a system of more than two objects cannot be described by the two-body interactions between all possible pairs, as a first approximation, the deviation is mainly due to a three-body force. The fundamental

strong interaction The strong interaction or strong force is a fundamental interaction that confines quarks into proton, neutron, and other hadron particles. The strong interaction also binds neutrons and protons to create atomic nuclei, where it is called the n ...

does exhibit such behaviour, the most important example being the stability experimentally observed for the

helium-3 Helium-3 (3He see also helion) is a light, stable isotope of helium with two protons and one neutron (the most common isotope, helium-4, having two protons and two neutrons in contrast). Other than protium (ordinary hydrogen), helium-3 is the ...

isotope, which can be described as a 3-body quantum cluster entity of two protons and one neutron NPin stable superposition. Direct evidence of a 3-body force in helium-3 is known

The existence of stable NPcluster calls into question models of the atomic nucleus that restrict nucleon interactions within shells to 2-body phenomenon. The three-nucleon-interaction is fundamentally possible because

gluon A gluon ( ) is an elementary particle that acts as the exchange particle (or gauge boson) for the strong force between quarks. It is analogous to the exchange of photons in the electromagnetic force between two charged particles. Gluons bind q ...

s, the mediators of the strong interaction, can couple to themselves. In

particle physics Particle physics or high energy physics is the study of fundamental particles and forces that constitute matter and radiation. The fundamental particles in the universe are classified in the Standard Model as fermions (matter particles) an ...

, the interactions between the three quarks that compose

hadron In particle physics, a hadron (; grc, ἁδρός, hadrós; "stout, thick") is a composite subatomic particle made of two or more quarks held together by the strong interaction. They are analogous to molecules that are held together by the ele ...

s can be described in a

diquark In particle physics, a diquark, or diquark correlation/clustering, is a hypothetical state of two quarks grouped inside a baryon (that consists of three quarks) (Lichtenberg 1982). Corresponding models of baryons are referred to as quark–diquark ...

model which might be equivalent to the hypothesis of a three-body force. There is growing evidence in the field of

nuclear physics Nuclear physics is the field of physics that studies atomic nuclei and their constituents and interactions, in addition to the study of other forms of nuclear matter. Nuclear physics should not be confused with atomic physics, which studies the ...

that three-body forces exist among the

nucleon In physics and chemistry, a nucleon is either a proton or a neutron, considered in its role as a component of an atomic nucleus. The number of nucleons in a nucleus defines the atom's mass number (nucleon number). Until the 1960s, nucleons were ...

s inside

atomic nuclei The atomic nucleus is the small, dense region consisting of protons and neutrons at the center of an atom, discovered in 1911 by Ernest Rutherford based on the 1909 Geiger–Marsden gold foil experiment. After the discovery of the neutron ...

for many different isotopes (three-nucleon force).

References

* * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Three-Body Force Force Nuclear physics

See also

References