Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-particle-physics-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2015/3/c/solution

TODO: the numerical resonance-area reading is unavailable from the retained source. Page 6 retains the upper data panels but loses the lower part of the scanned data image, including the numerical horizontal energy calibration. A vertical cross section scale and an apparent peak cannot supply without that calibration. The decoded image contains 2,834,898 of 4,437,216 required RGB bytes; the archived bundle has the same truncation. No horizontal scale or natural decay width is inferred from the display width.
The recoverable numerical conversion is nevertheless definite. With , , , and , b gives
This coefficient assumes the plotted exclusive electronic sample has not already been corrected for acceptance. A restored area, with continuum subtraction and acceptance convention checked, would complete the estimate. A tabulated modern J/psi meson width would be external information rather than a reading of these data.
The narrow scattering resonance indicates suppressed strong interaction decay. In the quark model, is below the open-charm quark threshold, so its constituents cannot simply emerge in separate charmed mesons. The OZI rule suppresses annihilation into light hadrons; for a color-singlet state the leading purely gluonic channel needs three gluons. The observed leptonic channels remain competitive. Its mass and fit charmonium; the small width alone would not uniquely identify the new quark flavour without the wider spectrum and threshold evidence.

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