Omega meson
The omega meson is a flavourless meson formed from a superposition of an up quark–antiquark and a down quark–antiquark pair. It is part of the vector meson nonet and mediates the nuclear force along with pions and rho mesons.
Properties
The most common decay mode for the ω meson is at, followed by at.| Particle name | Particle symbol | Antiparticle symbol | Quark content | Rest mass | IG | JPC | S | C | B' | Mean lifetime | Commonly decays to |
| Omega meson | Self | 782.66 ± 0.13 | 0− | 1−− | 0 | 0 | 0 | ++ or + |
The quark composition of the meson can be thought of as a mix between, and states, but it is very nearly a pure symmetric – state. This can be shown by deconstructing the wave function of the into its component parts. We see that the and mesons are mixtures of the SU(3) wave functions as follows.
where
The mixing angle at which the components decouple completely can be calculated to be, which almost corresponds to the actual value calculated from the masses of 35°. Therefore, the meson is nearly a pure symmetric – state.