quark

plural quarks

1. particlenatural sciencesIn the Standard Model, one of a number of elementary subatomic particles having fractional electric charge that forms matter. They are theorized not to exist in isolation, but only in combinations in hadrons such as neutrons and protons or in quark–gluon plasmas.

   A simpler and more elegant scheme can be constructed if we allow non-integral values for the charges. We can dispense entirely with the basic baryon b if we assign to the triplet t the following properties: spin #92;frac#123;1#125;#123;2#125;, z#61;#123;-#92;frac#123;1#125;#123;3

   1964 February 1, M[urray] Gell-Mann, “A Schematic Model of Baryons and Mesons”, in Physics Letters, volume 8, number 3, Amsterdam, North Holland: North-Holland Publishing Company, →DOI, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 23 Jun 2022, page 214, column 2

   2 more examples

   There are six known quarks in nature, the up, down, strange, charm, bottom, and the top quark. The quarks are arranged in three pairs or "generations". Each member of a pair may be transformed into its partner via the charged-current weak interaction. Together with the six known leptons (the electron, muon, tau, and their associated neutrinos), the six quarks constitute all of the known luminous matter in the universe. The understanding of the properties of the quarks and leptons and their interactions is therefore of paramount importance.

   2006 December, Arnuf Quadt, “Top Quark Physics at Hadron Colliders”, in The European Physical Journal C: Particles and Fields, Heidelberg, Baden-Württemberg: Springer, →DOI, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 835, column 1; republished as Douglas H. Beck, Dieter Haidt, John W[illiam] Negele, editors, Top Quark Physics at Hadron Colliders (Advances in the Physics of Particles and Nuclei; 28), Berlin; Heidelberg: Springer, 2007, →ISBN, page 1

   There were also particles no one had predicted that just appeared. Five of them are of interest to me here. In order of increasing modernity, they are the neutrino, the pi meson, the antiproton, the quark and the Higgs boson. […] It fairly rapidly became clear to physicists that free quarks were not going to be found. Making a virtue out of necessity, they invented a dynamics that would permanently confine quarks within particles. In this scenario quarks exchange particles called gluons. […] There is no escape. Quarks are imprisoned forever.

   2012 March-April, Jeremy Bernstein, “A Palette of Particles”, in American Scientist, volume 100, number 2, New Haven, Conn.: Sigma Xi, the Scientific Research Society, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 12 Apr 2023, page 146

   Synonyms: ace

2. broadlyX Window SystemcomputingAn integer that uniquely identifies a text string.

   Two functions are provided to convert between strings and quarks: XrmStringToQuark and XrmQuarkToString […] The second takes a quark as its parameter and returns a pointer to its associated string; it is used primarily for debugging and runtime error messages.

   1992, Keith D. Gregory, “Resources Revisited”, in Programming with Motif, New York, N.Y.: Springer-Verlag New York, →DOI, →ISBN, page 453

3. broadlyslangX Window SystemcomputingA nonsense, trivial text string.

1. uncountableA soft, creamy, unripened cheese made from cow's milk, originating from and eaten throughout central, northern, eastern, and southeastern Europe, as well as the Low Countries.

plural quarks

1. informalFalkland IslandsThe black-crowned night heron (Nycticorax nycticorax).

   Synonyms: quawk