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color superconductivity


moth

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i was just reading up on superdense matter in this article:

http://arxiv.org/abs/0705.2708v2

 

and this passage got me wondering

"There has been much recent progress in our understanding of quark matter,

culminating in the discovery that if quark matter exists it ought to be in a

color superconducting state [22, 23, 24, 25]. This is made possible by the strong

interaction among the quarks which is very attractive in some channels. Pairs

of quarks are thus expected to form Cooper pairs very readily. Since pairs of

quarks cannot be color-neutral, the resulting condensate will break the local

color symmetry and form what is called a color superconductor."

 

when color charges move do they cause a field like the magnetic field when electric charges move?

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To answer your question, yes they do.

 

thank you for your reply :)

 

since electrons are not quarks i guess the properties of this field are different from a magnetic field.

do you recall anything about how matter would be affected by this field?(is there a name for it?)


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or, if this field is the same as a magnetic field then maybe it is involved in diamagnetism.


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learning backwards is full of surprises.

after a quick look at wikipedia's quark article :doh:i see quarks do have electric charge that is a fraction of an electron's charge.

it's interesting, quarks associate in three's and their fractional charge is thirds.


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electroweak theory looks like an interesting place. talk about slow light, a W boson must be insane.

i found some scraps on the color-force field from SLAC -

"After a high energy collision, a quark or gluon starts to move away from the rest of the formerly color-neutral object that contained it. A region of color force-field is produced between the two parts. The energy density in this color force fields is sufficient to produce additional quarks and antiquarks. The forces between the color-charged particles quickly cause the collection of quarks and antiquarks to be rearranged into color-neutral combinations. What emerges, far enough from the collision point to be detected, is always a collection or jet of color-neutral hadrons, never the initial high-energy quark or gluon alone."

 

http://www2.slac.stanford.edu/vvc/theory/colorchrg.html#Confinement

it's not clear to me if all these quarks and anti-quarks are destroyed or if some of the collision energy is transformed into "new" matter??

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since electrons are not quarks i guess the properties of this field are different from a magnetic field.

do you recall anything about how matter would be affected by this field?(is there a name for it?)

 

It is quite different. The quarks produce normal magnetic fields too of course. The "magnetic" force arising from the strong interaction is known as "color magnetism".

 

it's not clear to me if all these quarks and anti-quarks are destroyed or if some of the collision energy is transformed into "new" matter??

 

They are not destroyed - they pair up to form color neutral particles. For example, when the color flux tube snaps, a quark antiquark pair is created out of the vacuum (using the released energy) and the new antiquark might then bind with the old quark to form a color neutral meson. This will then decay to lighter particles.

 

Color magnetism is more usually discussed within the context of a quark-gliuon plasma.

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