= Open strong-decay thresholds for baryons
A <strong interaction> decay must conserve quark flavour and have final rest energy below the initial <mass>. An excited light baryon can often decay to a lighter baryon plus a <pion>. A ground-state strange baryon may lack any such open flavour-conserving channel even when its spin permits one. In particular, the <Omega baryon> cannot decay strongly to a <Xi baryon> plus a <pion> because that changes <strangeness>; its flavour-conserving Xi-kaon channel is closed by the mass threshold. A spin-three-half assignment alone does not imply a strong decay.
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