The most common transformations are listed in the quark transformation table. These diagrams are useful in analyzing decay processes to help keep track of what is happening on the quark level. The modes of quark flavor transformation by the weak interaction are shown in Feynman diagrams. The decay of the down quark is involved in the decay of the neutron and in beta decay in general.
The decay of the up quark above is important in the proton-proton cycle of nuclear fusion. The most common of the quark transformations are those of the up and down quarks which are the constituents of ordinary matter in the form of protons and neutrons. The c quark has about 5% probability of decaying into a d quark instead of an s quark. The transformations shown are the most probable for the quarks, but there are other possibilities. The positive W* decays to a positron and an electron neutrino, and the negative W* to an electron and antineutrino as can be seen in the example reactions above.
* The W bosons which are indicated as W* are virtual bosons, existing only within the time frame allowed by the uncertainty principle. The following table shows the usual pattern of quark transformation and gives examples of some hadron processes to which those quark transformations contribute. DOWN QUARK is also part of the Everyday Matter 6-pack and the. The general pattern is that the quarks will decay to the most massive quark possible, leading the the pattern A tiny little point inside the Proton and Neutron, it is friends forever with the Up Quark. This is because the transformation proceeds by the exchange of charged W bosons, which must change the charge by one unit. There is a pattern of these quark decays: a quark of charge +2/3 ( u,c,t) is always transformed to a quark of charge -1/3 (d,s,b) and vice versa. The decay of hadrons by the weak interaction can be viewed as a process of decay of their constituent quarks. Its bare mass is not well determined, but probably lies between 4 and 8 MeV. Decay Paths for Quarks Transformation of Quark Flavors by the Weak Interaction The down quark is a first-generation quark with a charge of -(1/3)e.It is the second-lightest of all quarks.