I had a long letter on this yesterday and broke away to check something on my browser, and it was gone when I returned. Rule 34 - If not saved, will lose.
My interest was the decay of the neutron. The interesting part was your identification of one of the electrons being more weakly bound than the other. Assume you are right. Think of the binding energy of the weak electron as being analogous to the first binding energy of an electron to its atom. With an atom, an electron is pried off through one of two means: a physical collision with a particle having sufficient energy to impart to the bound electron, or a "packet" of electromagnetic energy (photon) whose Planck energy state is that quantized value needed to "ionize the neutron and thus initiate its decay.
If ionizing radiation of sufficiently high energy (generally UV or higher) is not present, and other particles with sufficient energy are also not present, ionization will not occur with a neutral atom. It does not ionize "on its own".
The neutron appears to be different. If it is not bound to another particle, it will decay "spontaneously" in a matter of about 15 minutes. The sequence is that the neutron emits an electron and an electron antineutrino, and a proton remains in its place. The answers desired include:
Have observations of neutron decay ever been made upon
a single neutron in a good enough vacuum and at a low enough temperature and with a near total absence of radiation to preclude its decay being caused by said collisions or radiation? (I can't find e reference on this, so assume not.) Or have there been radiation or other particles, neutrons or otherwise, present in the experiment?
What is the strength of the weak electron's binding energy in a neutron?
What velocity or temperature or eV value would a
particle need to knock this weak electron off the neutron and initiate its decay?
What frequency would a
photon need to have to knock off the weak electron? This calculation can be derived from the Planck relationship, energy = Planck constant times speed of light divided by wavelength of the radiation, or E = hc/λ. Since the term c/λ is the same as the frequency in Hertz (cycles per second), E = h x frequency. Knowing the binding energy E of the weaker electron and Planck constant h (roughly 6.62606896 x 10^-34), solve for the frequency, f = E/h.
Somehow the split between the energy devoted to accelerating the antineutrino out of the neutron and the energy to "ionize" the electron to escape velocity needs to be rationalized. That's beyond what I can do, or it would be common knowledge by now. Maybe it is!
Your simplification of the quark family is brilliant. Please press on with your simulations. Thanks!
Jim
Presently experiments on neutron decays are being run in the U.S. by the NIST using an accelerated electron beam, so single neutrons are not being isolated (which may not be practical) in order to time and measure their decay products, which are fairly well established.
