The charm quark and the charm antiquark in a
(eta-c) meson annihilate into a
pion () and two kaons.
- Frame 1: A charm and anticharm quark head towards each other....
- Frame 2: ...annihilate...
- Frame 3: ...into virtual gluons.
- Frame 4: A strange quark and an antistrange
quark emerge from the gluon cloud.
- Frame 5: As the quarks move apart, a
color force field
develops between them.
- Frame 6: The energy in the field increases as the
quarks further separate, until there is sufficient energy in the
force field to be converted into an up quark and and an up antiquark.
- Frame 7: The up and antistrange quarks begin to separate.
- Frame 8: There is sufficient energy in the
color field between the up quark and the strange
antiquark to produce another quark-antiquark pair (down and antidown).
- Frame 9: The anti-up and strange
quark segregate into a color neutral meson (a kaon).
- Frame 10: All the
quarks have formed color neutral pairs.
The up - antidown particle is a pion,
and the down - antistrange particle is another kaon.
Each such decay yields a set of color neutral
particles made from the quarks that materialize from the energy
in the color force field. Many different outcomes are possible.
The intermediate stages of this process occur in
less than almost a billionth of
a billionth of a billionth of a second, and are not observable.