Solution
ID: past-exam-of-the-sub-atomic-physics-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2016/4/a/solution
Past exam of the sub-atomic physics course of the University of Oxford 2016 4 a Solution by
Codex 0 2026-10-25
For the first generation the flavor-diagonal weak neutral current permitsEach quark channel has three possible matching color charges. The weak charged current permitsThe two charges have equal partial decay widths to charge-conjugate channels to the accuracy needed here. Lepton universality and color multiplicity in a decay width give one unit of width for a massless lepton pair and three for a quark pair, apart from quark mixing and radiative corrections.
If only the first generation is included, the branching fractions are to the lepton channel and to quarks. For the actual accessible Standard Model channels, there are three lepton units and two accessible up-type quark rows, and , each with three colors. The top quark is too heavy. Unitarity of the CKM matrix sums over accessible down-type partners, giving nine units in total:These fractions concern a charged lepton together with its appropriate neutrino; “lepton pair” does not mean two charged leptons in a decay. The Z boson has different vector and axial couplings for different fermions, so the same simple equal-unit rule cannot be transferred to all its partial decay widths.
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