Function Repository Resource:

ParticleDecayChain

Source Notebook

Compute and visualize possible decays of a particle

Contributed by: Julia Gao and Joseph Brennan

ResourceFunction["ParticleDecayChain"][particle]

computes the decay chain of particle using its "DecayModes".

ResourceFunction["ParticleDecayChain"][particle,"Hypergraph"]

computes the decay chain of particle and visualize it as a hypergraph.

Details and Options

The Wolfram Knowledgebase contains the properties of over one thousand particles, accessible via ParticleData.

ResourceFunction["ParticleDecayChain"] uses the "DecayModes" property of particles to recursively generate a data structure representing a particle decay.

Returns a hypergraph, a convenient, higher-dimensional way to visualize the decay chain, since a particle and its decay products can be vertices of a single hyperedge.

The following options are supported:

"DecaySteps"

the longest sequence of decays to compute

"MinimumBranchingRatio"

branching ratios below this are neglected

"MaximumDecayModes"

All

the largest number of distinct decay modes to retain for each particle

ResourceFunction["ParticleDecayChain"] uses the same default options as ResourceFunction["HypergraphPlot"] except for "BaseLayout" and "SubsetBoundaryScale", which are unsupported:

The particle must be a valid Entity in the ParticleData database.

Examples

Basic Examples (1)

Find all possible decays of a neutron:

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Scope (2)

Find the decay chain of a more obscure particle:

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Visualize as a hypergraph:

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Options (4)

Choose a custom number of decay steps:

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Neglect the decay modes that have a very low probability:

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Or, retain only a specific number of decay modes for each particle (these will be in reverse order of branching ratio by default):

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Use the same options when visualizing as a hypergraph. For the default number of decay steps (two), each particle has only their two highest-probability decays:

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Use custom options for the hypergraph layout:

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Use more than the default number of decay steps:

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Possible Issues (8)

Some particles have unknown or missing decay modes, which returns the root particle only:

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Some particles have known possible decay modes, but they are not observed. This also returns the root particle only:

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If the value of "MaximumDecayModes" exceeds the actual number of decay modes, all decay modes are retained:

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If the value of "MinimumBranchingRatio" is in the uncertainty range of a branching ratio, then the branching ratio is not considered 'less than' it. The FullForm of the branching ratio shows us the Accuracy to which the branching ratio is known:

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