# Why do 2 d not decay into alpha particle and neutral pion?

Tags:
1. Oct 25, 2017

### MxwllsPersuasns

1. The problem statement, all variables and given/known data

The reaction dd → απ0 (where α is the Helium-4 nucleus and d denotes the deuteron) has never been observed. Why?

2. Relevant equations

3. The attempt at a solution

So I checked first the masses to make sure energy/momentum are conserved and found out that mass of 2d is 3751.2 MeV while the decay products have a combined mass of 3862.27 which is greater than the initial state and thus violates conservation of mass. Could this possibly be the case? It just seems simple and we're currently studying topics such as isospin and parity and so I had checked things like charge and baryon number conservation and they seemed alright so I figured I might ask here. Thanks guys!

2. Oct 26, 2017

### Orodruin

Staff Emeritus
Mass is not conserved. Energy is conserved but you could collide two particles with enough kinetic energy to make heavier particles. This is what particle colliders do.

Draft saved Draft deleted

Similar Discussions: Why do 2 d not decay into alpha particle and neutral pion?
{"extraction_info": {"found_math": false, "script_math_tex": 0, "script_math_asciimath": 0, "math_annotations": 0, "math_alttext": 0, "mathml": 0, "mathjax_tag": 0, "mathjax_inline_tex": 0, "mathjax_display_tex": 0, "mathjax_asciimath": 0, "img_math": 0, "codecogs_latex": 0, "wp_latex": 0, "mimetex.cgi": 0, "/images/math/codecogs": 0, "mathtex.cgi": 0, "katex": 0, "math-container": 0, "wp-katex-eq": 0, "align": 0, "equation": 0, "x-ck12": 0, "texerror": 0, "math_score": 0.9152516722679138, "perplexity": 879.4719317715577}, "config": {"markdown_headings": true, "markdown_code": true, "boilerplate_config": {"ratio_threshold": 0.18, "absolute_threshold": 10, "end_threshold": 5, "enable": true}, "remove_buttons": true, "remove_image_figures": true, "remove_link_clusters": true, "table_config": {"min_rows": 2, "min_cols": 3, "format": "plain"}, "remove_chinese": true, "remove_edit_buttons": true, "extract_latex": true}, "warc_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-51/segments/1512948545526.42/warc/CC-MAIN-20171214163759-20171214183759-00711.warc.gz"}