isospin
- noun
- /ˈaɪsoʊˌspɪn/
- Specialized
- Isospin symmetry had been introduced in the 1930s to explain the similarities of protons and neutrons.
Examples
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In particle physics, isospin describes how protons and neutrons can be treated as two states of the same particle.
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Isospin remains an important organizing principle of nuclear and particle physics.
Academic text (2012) -
If this is indeed the predicted T+, it must be an isospin singlet.
Academic text (2003) -
For these particles, Schwinger proposed a direct analog to isospin.
Academic text (1995) -
The three ordinary spins are lined up in it in the same direction, and the three isospins are lined up.
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In this manner, the otherwise mysterious Gell-Mann-Nishijima formula, which relates charge, hypercharge, and isospin, had a natural explanation.
Academic text (1995) -
Just like rotations in ordinary space, rotations in the abstract isospin space do not commute.
Academic text (2004) -
Conversely, the other state of that nucleon, the neutron, would be an isospin downstate.
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The deuterium nucleus, called the deuteron, is a boson with spin 1 and isospin 0.
Academic text (2012) -
In 1954, searching for a field theory of the strong interactions, Chen-Ning Yang and Robert Mills generalized the notion of local gauge invariance from simple phase shifts to rotations in isospin space.
Academic text (2004)
Surface Forms
Morphology
Etymology
Isospin comes from the parts iso- meaning 'equal' and spin meaning 'turn' or a particle's basic property. A helpful way to remember it is to think that physicists treat protons and neutrons as 'equal' partners in a special way, so isospin names the shared property that links them.
