Talk:Tau (particle)

name

yeah, so it's not actually called a tauon. It might be easier for you guys to separate it from the wiki entries for greek letters etc but you've basically made a word up here. There's no greek letter 'electr' before you start going on about leptons and mesons ending in 'on'. I'm a particle physicist, i should know.

Speedy delete???

According to the history this page was moved to Tau (particle) and now we're moving it back again?

Edd 23:22, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Yes, most of the articles linking to this particle do so via the Tauon redirect page. I've adjusted the remaining few articles so that all articles now point to Tauon. Check the template on Tau (particle) article - it refers to Tauon (which is a redirect to Tau (particle) and not Tau (particle) - so it remains linked when it should be bold. If we can move Tau (particle) to Tauon then all the redirects go away; and the template will finally work correctly. I'd suggest that the original move was a mistake - possibly by a person whose national article for this particle is Tau rather than Tauon. As such, the English page has probably laboured under a less common name. Ian Cairns 23:36, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Yup, seems logical enough. Edd 20:12, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Move completed. Thanks for your assistance. Ian Cairns 21:12, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)

"Seems logical enough", "probably laboured under a less common name", and speculation on the national origin of an editor are not sufficient criteria. "Correct, and agrees with verifiable sources" would have been. Unfortunately, the verifiable sources, such as particle physics textbooks and journal papers would support naming the page "Tau (particle)". This is why I have listed the page for a requested move back. The template and any linking pages can and should be changed as well. The Wilschon (talk) 17:05, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Why is the tauon actually called like that?

It's not called the "tauon". It is called either the "tau" or the "tau lepton". As a reference I offer you Martin Perl's nobel prize citation, for example. On the Wikipedia page about Perl, someone had added a note "tauon" after the correct name "tau lepton". I had been wondering why this page was so strangely named since I first came to Wikipedia, and never bothered reading this talk page until now and discovering what had happened. Anyway I've removed every "tauon" I can find from Wikipedia. If necessary a note on the "tauon" name can be added here. --DannyWilde 15:15, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

I think it's great that the tau's primary page is under "tau lepton", since that's by far the most common usage. But perhaps it's a bit overzealous to remove all references to "tauon". It's certainly not absent from the literature, and it does follow the standard "(foo) (lept/mes)on" --> "(foo)on" rule. I'm going to add a note on the subject at the top. -- Xerxes 16:09, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

A note on this page is enough, other references should be removed. Funnily enough I used to think the name was "tauon", I can't remember where I got the impression from. --DannyWilde 02:02, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

I had a good look on the Google but I couldn't find any clues about where "tauon" comes from. Interestingly I found lots of pages by astronomers using the word "tauon". I couldn't find any particle physicists using the word "tauon", although I found it being used on a couple of particle physics-related sites, for example in a speech by a non-physicist held on the SLAC site. Also, it appears in lots of these amateur guides to physics. Anyway, I have no idea where the "tauon" name comes from, but so far I see no evidence at all of its being used in particle physics. --DannyWilde 07:45, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

Feynman diagram

I think the Feynman diagram of the tau decay may be wrong. I believe at the initial decay, there should be the W- shown, and a tau-neutrino, rather than the anti-tau neutrino shown (as per conservation of lepton 'family' number, which should apply in this case). Can anyone confirm this?

You are right. the arrow in the other neutrino is also pointing in the wrong direction. Does anybody know how to fix this kind of image file? Dauto 06:47, 12 May 2007 (UTC).

There's something wrong with the Decay section; the decay branching probabilities don't add up to 100% and there's a reference to a commented-out image being incorrect in the article text. I've added the disputed-section template to the section until someone who understands what's going on can come and fix it. 75.15.155.179 (talk) 06:43, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

For reference, there are two diagrams at Image:Feynman diagram of decay of tau lepton.svg and Image:Tau-decays.png.png. Time3000 (talk) 17:33, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Page Name

When did that page change its name from Tau lepton to tauon? The other name is a better choice. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dauto (talk • contribs) 22:21, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

I changed it in the last week for consistency (electron/muon/tauon). The other alternative would be mu lepton and tau lepton, but muon is the overwhelmingly predominant usage, while "tauon" is more prevalent than "tau lepton" in a google hit fights (roughly 784K hits vs. 69.5K hits). "Tauon electron" and "tau lepton electron" is 10.6K hits vs. 39 K hits. These two things (consistency and google hits) warrants the name tauon, IMO. Having the tauon be named the tau lepton would make it special in that it would be the only lepton with a name with the etymology [symbol + lepton] on wikipedia.Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 23:32, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

I may be wrong but I think tau lepton is the more modern usage. I won't fight you over that though. There are plenty of factually wrong or missleading statments in the WP High Energy pages. No need to argue about naming conventions. Dauto (talk) 16:26, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Consistency is all very nice, but on a similar idea to your google search a search of the Web of Knowledge (scientific papers) gave 24 results for tauon and 1862 for tau lepton. Clearly the second is the most used by scientists. 14:22, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

IAA Particle Physicist. Nobody ever says "tauon" in this field. You rarely even hear "tau lepton". By far the most common thing is simply "tau" (or even "τ"), as in "We're looking for Higgs going to a tau pair", or "we detect the τ in the three-prong decay channel". Furthermore, a quick search on the arxiv (nearly all new papers are posted on the arxiv at some point) shows a grand total of 15 papers using the word "tauon", which I think is rather telling... This page should be named tau (particle) . If you like, I can provide references to any number of textbooks, reference works, and articles using "tau" or "τ", for instance Cheng and Li ("τ"). The Wilschon (talk) 16:54, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Tauon-Catalyzed Fusion

Theoretically shouldn't Tauon-Catalyzed fusion be possible just like Muon-catalyzed_fusion? I would think it would cause fusion more readily because the Tauon should be 3477 times closer the the nucleus than an election, as opposed to the Muon's 207 times closer. Maybe this should get a mention? Ittiz (talk) 15:05, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

I'm not an expert on fusion, but I would expect the reason it isn't pursued is twofold: the high decay rate of the tau and the difficulty in reliably producing taus (esp. as compared with producing muons) The Wilschon (talk) 16:42, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Makes sense. What do you think would be appropriate for Wikipedia, a redirect to muon-catalyzed fusion and create a section discussion tauon-catalyzed fusion (with refs, of course)?Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 19:57, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Sure, I guess. Provided, of course, that there are any refs. I would be surprised to find any because, to the best of my knowledge (admittedly fusion physics is not my subfield), it is not an active area of research at all. The Wilschon (talk) 03:07, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

Requested move 2009

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was no consensus. GrooveDog (talk) (Review) 21:09, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

---

Tauon → Tau (particle) — The name "tauon" is rarely used in the field of physics for the third generation lepton. The name "tau lepton" is occasionally used. The name "tau" or "τ" is nearly always used. I realize that this is inconsistent with the naming of the muon and the electron (second and first generation lepton, respectively), but wikipedia should describe, not prescribe, usage. The Wilschon (talk) 17:01, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Oppose. The reason is that it breaks the electron/muon/tauon naming symmetry and thus confuses the reader for no reason, especially considering the wikipedia usage is also predominantly tauon. Google hits also show that tauon is more widespread (768,000 hits for "tauon", 74,500 hits for "tau lepton", 10,800 for "tau particle"). I agree that google hits is not the best metric to gauge use amongst scientific literature (tau lepton would probably win here), but tauon is accepted enough to be used for making things more accessible. The article also mentions all the alternative names of the tauon, and tau lepton redirects here. Switching would introduce a lot of confusion, with minimal gain. Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 19:39, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

I disagree that there is or even should be any lepton naming symmetry. It might be nice, but if wishes were horses... We might as well rename the neutrinos to help out the SUSY folks then (neutrino/neutralino, blech)! As a counter to your google searches, I find that tau physics gets 5,850,000 hits, tauon physics gets 30,500 hits, and "tau lepton" physics gets 64,700 hits. Alternatively, tau particle gets 767,000 hits, tauon particle gets 28,500 hits, and "tau lepton" particle gets 123,000 hits. Since I do not know of any usage of "tauon" in the literature, either in the field or in popular science, I expect that most people, physicists or merely the curious, will be less confused by a more standard usage. Again, we are an encyclopedia and must describe, not prescribe. I am presuming that if the title of this article changed, the rest of the wikipedia usage would also be changed to accord. The Wilschon (talk) 03:26, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

"tau physics" hits are meaningless, there's just too many false positives on it (tau is used for lifetime, torque, ... ). For usage in literature, see for example arXiv:0812.1875, arXiv:hep-ph/0703049, arXiv:hep-ph/0509043, doi:10.1016/0168-583X(89)90996-8, doi:10.1016/S0920-5632(00)00924-5 and so on. "Tau" is no more used than "mu"s for muons, and "nu-e"s for electron neutrinos. Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 07:06, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

Ok, so we leave out the searches with the word physics as a descriminator. How about the ones with particle? I hardly think your original tauon to tau lepton to tau particle is an apples to apples comparison, since I am not claiming that anyone calls the particle "tau particle", but rather simply "tau" (or "tau lepton"). Furthermore, citing arXiv papers for usage of "tauon" is particularly disingenous, considering that there are a grand total of 15 of them. The "tauon mass" papers are furthermore little more than numerology. As a counter, let me list some arXiv papers using "tau" or "tau lepton":

I found 17 papers using "tau" as the particle name in the first 50 hits on the arXiv under hep-ex (a total of 299 hits using "tau" in the title under hep-ex). This is more than the total number of papers using "tauon" at all in any category on the arXiv. Note that these are not using tau, \tau, or $\tau$ as LaTeX-pidgin for τ, which is also common.

• http://arxiv.org/abs/0906.1014
• http://arxiv.org/abs/0906.0572
• http://arxiv.org/abs/0905.3568
• http://arxiv.org/abs/0905.1511
• http://arxiv.org/abs/0903.4800
• http://arxiv.org/abs/0902.3740
• http://arxiv.org/abs/0812.2285
• http://arxiv.org/abs/0811.0088
• http://arxiv.org/abs/0810.3656
• http://arxiv.org/abs/0810.3519
• http://arxiv.org/abs/0810.3464
• http://arxiv.org/abs/0805.2491
• http://arxiv.org/abs/0805.3505
• http://arxiv.org/abs/0810.0465
• http://arxiv.org/abs/0810.2664
• http://arxiv.org/abs/0810.3144
• http://arxiv.org/abs/0810.3219

I also found 17 papers using "tau lepton" as the particle name in the first 50 hits on the arXiv (some hits are cross-listed under hep-ph) out of a total of 74 hits for papers under hep-ex using tau and lepton in the title. This is again more than the total number of papers using "tauon" at all in any category on the arXiv. Again I have attempted to exclude papers that were using LaTeX-pidgin for τ.

• http://arxiv.org/abs/0906.1014
• http://arxiv.org/abs/0905.4086
• http://arxiv.org/abs/0808.2161
• http://arxiv.org/abs/0710.5141
• http://arxiv.org/abs/0710.1368
• http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ph/0702132
• http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ex/0604022
• http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ex/0602044
• http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ex/0501065
• http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ph/0408107
• http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ex/0406010
• http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ph/0403110
• http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ex/0312046
• http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ex/0311047
• http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ex/0311028
• http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ex/0302028
• http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ex/0210066

When one considers that there are two other major arXiv sections (hep-ph and hep-th) to examine, it becomes clear that "tau" or "tau lepton" are used in the literature as the name for the third generation lepton overwhelming more than "tauon". The Wilschon (talk) 20:54, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose the descriptor is dropped only when placed in context, otherwise it should be named tauon or tau lepton. 70.29.208.69 (talk) 22:05, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Support. The particle is almost universally referred to verbally as "tau" in speech among particle physicists, and as "tau" or "τ" in writing, as any survey of the particle physics literature will show. The naming symmetry is indeed broken in practice; for instance, this excerpt from David Griffiths' well-known introductory particle physics textbook: "There are six leptons, classified according to their charge (Q), electron number (L_e), muon number (L_μ), and tau number (L_τ)" (emphasis added). If further evidence is needed, note that the hypothesized supersymmetric partner of the tau is called the "stau", not the "stauon". An arXiv search of the former yields 227 hits, while the latter yields ZERO. Yill577 (talk) 17:46, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

• Support. "Tau" is the common name. Naming conventions do not mention symmetry as a reason for not following normal practice. Aubergine (talk) 03:31, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Move request 2010

Tauon → Tau Lepton — The term 'tauon' is hardly used in physics literature to refer to the heaviest lepton (see, for example tauon vs tau lepton), and is on the verge of being an invented name on Wikipedia. Physics texts, popular science books, and the media all predominantly use 'tau' or 'tau lepton'. Uniformity of the charged lepton names on Wikipedia hardly justifies naming an article based on a rarely used term.

TriTertButoxy (talk) 16:39, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

• Tauon neutrino → Tau neutrino

• Comment I would say that "on the verge of being an invented name on Wikipedia" is highly disingenuous. Look at all these books, that use the term "tauon" - many that are older than Wikipedia, several of them dating from before 1990. Similarly for tauon neutrino [4]. Steven Weinberg called it a "tauon" [5] . 70.29.212.131 (talk) 19:49, 19 June 2010 (UTC)