Modelo de quarks e sistemas multiquarks

Abstract

The discovery of many particles, especially in the 50's, when new accelerators appeared, motivated the searching for a model that would describe in a simple form the whole of known particles. The quark model, based in the mathematical structure of group theory, provided in the beginning of the 60's a simplified description of hadronic matter already known, proposing that three particles, called quarks, would originate all the observed hadrons. This model was able to preview the existence of particles that were later detected, confirming its consistency. Extensions of the quark model were made in the beginning of the 70's, focusing in describing observed particles that were excited states of the fundamental particles and others that presented new quantum numbers (flavors). Recently, exotic states like tetraquarks and pentaquarks, also called multiquarks systems, predicted by the model, were observed, what renewed the interest in the way how quarks are confined inside the hadrons. In this article we present a review of the quark model and a discussion on the new exotic states. Copyright by the Sociedade Brasileira de Física.