Pion Decay

Abstract

The decays of pions, the lightest particles composed of quarks, provide important insight into fundamental questions in particle physics including basic symmetries, the universality of fermionic weak interactions, and aspects of the strong interaction described by Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD). An introduction to the theoretical and experimental study of charged and neutral pion decays is presented.

Comments: Pedagogical review for a chapter in the Encyclopedia of Particle Physics (published by Elsevier); 25 pages, latex, 11 figures