Table of Baryons

As an example of the notation in the column of decay modes, the sigma + decay mode is written

which implies there are two common decay modes,

Particles which decay by the strong interaction typically do so on a time scale of about 10^-23 seconds, and some of the baryons listed in the table above have lifetimes on the order of 10^-10 seconds. The reason for those longer lifetimes is that they are forbidden by some kind of conservation law from decaying by the strong interaction, and must decay by the weak interaction. These decays involve quark transformations which can be represented by Feynman diagrams.There are dozens of other baryons (i.e., combinations of three quarks), but most of them decay by the strong interaction and are so short lived that they don't leave a measurable track in a bubble chamber or other detection device. These baryons have been detected as "resonances" or peaks in the probability for particle interactions.