Experimental evidence for quarks (deep inelastic scattering)
Evidencia experimental de los quarks (dispersión inelástica profunda)
- Date
- 1968-1969 · confidence high
- Place
- SLAC, Menlo Park, California, United States
- Credited to
- Jerome Friedman; Henry Kendall; Richard Taylor; James Bjorken; Richard Feynman
- People
- 👤 Henry Way Kendall1926–1999👤 James Bjorken1934–2024👤 Jerome Isaac Friedman1930–👤 Richard Edward Taylor1929–2018👤 Richard Feynman1918–1988
- Field
- Cosmos & Earth
What was discovered
High-energy electrons scattered by protons bounce back as if colliding with point-like constituents inside them, the equivalent of Rutherford's experiment for the proton. Quarks (partons) go from mathematical artifice to physical reality.
1990 Nobel Prize for Friedman, Kendall and Taylor.
What it led to
- Quantum chromodynamics
- Asymptotic freedom
- Proton structure functions (HERA)
- Acceptance of the quark model
Built on
- The quark model1964
- Bjorken scaling
- SLAC's 3 km linear accelerator
Made possible
- Asymptotic freedom and quantum chromodynamics (QCD)1973
- High-energy electron linear accelerators