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$Sigma^0$ and $n$ decay

Physics Asked on July 17, 2021

I was asked to show that in the baryon octet, the $Sigma^0$ baryon is the only particle which decays electromagnetically.
Since it is an electromagnetic decay, strangeness should be conserved but I don’t really get why can’t a neutron (which doesn’t have strangeness) also decay ellectromagnetically into a meson plus a photon. Is there any conservation law violated? I don’t really know whether the quark content has to be conserved or not…

I also was asked to show why in the baryon octet, the neutron is the only particle which can decay into leptons. In this case, I came up with another decay
$Sigma^-$ $rightarrow$ n + e$^-$+ $bar{nu_{e}}$ which doesn’t seem to violate any conservation law.

Is there something that I’m missing? Any help is welcome!

One Answer

You may be basically asked to understand the PDG. You can't change strangeness, electromagnetically.

So you may only decay by emitting a photon and rearranging your quarks in the case where your baryon charge stays the same (!), $Sigma ^0 to Lambda gamma$, which makes the neutral Σ nine orders of magnitude shorter-lived than its isopartners. No other options are available, energetically, and this is the only spot in the octet where this (same-charge members) happens. (And, as you appreciated, you must conserve baryon number, so that option is closed.)

Now, in a different world, the neutron would prefer to decay (by rearranging quarks) to a proton and a $pi^-$ if it could, energetically: but check that the n-p mass difference is too small. So its only option is the usual weak decay to an electron and an antineutrino and a proton (semileptonic: some of the decay products are leptons) and it takes it forever to do that, about a quarter of an hour...

The $Sigma^-$, however, has that option, since it is so much heavier than the neutron, to decay weakly to $n~pi^-$, which it does most of the time. But your mode $n~e^- bar nu$ is also OK, except subdominant (BR ~ $10^{-3}$), and is, in fact, measured, Bourquin 1983, providing valuable WI information.

Correct answer by Cosmas Zachos on July 17, 2021

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