In particle physics, what is a jet?
In: Physics
~50 years ago we learned that protons and neutrons are made up of smaller constituents called “quarks” and “gluons”.
However, these constituents have a weird property that they cannot exist on their own.
As a consequence, if you separate two quarks (which are together stable), you will create two new quarks in the distance between the two, resulting in a total of four quarks.
Imagine blowing air into a large bubble which breaks into two smaller bubbles at some point instead.
If this process is repeated, more and more quarks are created in a cascade.
You can do this by colliding two protons (as is done at LHC). Through this if a quark is pushed out of the proton, new quarks are created along the direction of the quark that was pushed out. This creates a cascade as described above which is called a jet.
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