Topic summary
Lambda baryons
Extracted from the Wikipedia article Lambda baryon.
Types
Lambda baryons are usually represented by the symbols Λ
,Λ
c,Λ
b, and Λ
t. In this notation, the superscript character indicates whether the particle is electrically neutral () or carries a positive charge (). The subscript character, or its absence, indicates whether the third quark is a strange quark (Λ
) (no subscript), a charm quark (Λ
c), a bottom quark (Λ
b), or a top quark (Λ
t). Physicists expect to not observe a lambda baryon with a top quark, because the Standard Model of particle physics predicts that the mean lifetime of top quarks is roughly 5×10 seconds; that is about 1/20 of the mean timescale for strong interactions, which indicates that the top quark would decay before a lambda baryon could form a hadron.