Secondary collisions?
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by
bugman184
Is it possible (or more accurately, "likely") for a particle produced in a collision to have a secondary collision? See at 11 o'clock near the centre, there is a vertex. Then one of the lines from that vertex travels out to another vertex (again at 11 o'clock, further out).
Posted
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by
Whoandwhatitis
moderator
in response to bugman184's comment.
I see what you're talking about. There's a good chance that this is a superposition of tracks in 3D space. So these three particles may not even cross paths. From our point of view, they may be angles slightly toward or away from us.
I'm not sure if particles would have a larger chance of interacting with something else following a collision, but my guess is that this would be the case. It would very much depend upon the energy of the particles involved, their interaction properties (color charge, spin, electric charge), the angle of attack and their cross-section. Plus composite particles - such as protons - would be torn into their constituent parts. This is kind of like how a bird shot cartridge expels many ball bearings, which can then collide with other particles. Except in this case, it's mostly quarks and gluons that are running into things.
I'll bet I'm horribly over-simplifying this and I probably don't have a firm grasp on the overall picture of the interactions of the particles in these images. Somebody help correct me if I'm wrong!
Thanks!
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by
DZM
admin
I would think, based on how infinitesimally small these particles are, that it would be almost impossible for two to collide after the first collision. (But that is NOT an informed opinion and I freely admit that physics was my worst subject in school! :p)
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