Hyperon 2026-10-20
A baryon containing one or more strange quarks and no heavier quark. The light hyperon multiplets include lambda, sigma, xi and omega baryons. Strong and electromagnetic interactions conserve strangeness, whereas a weak interaction can change it; a photon in the final state does not by itself make a hyperon decay electromagnetic.
A hyperon decay that changes quark flavour while emitting a photon. An example is , which changes strangeness and cannot be purely electromagnetic. Its amplitude can contain short-distance loops and long-distance hadronic contributions. photon attachments to a weak quark-exchange graph must be completed consistently with electromagnetic gauge invariance. A quark topology identifies allowed flavour flow but does not by itself calculate a reliable hadronic rate.