List of baryons

Baryons are composite particles made of three quarks, as opposed to mesons, which are composite particles made of an equal number of quarks and antiquarks. Baryons and mesons are both hadrons, which are particles composed solely of quarks or both quarks and antiquarks. The term baryon is derived from the Greek "βαρύς" (barys), meaning "heavy", because, at the time of their naming, it was believed that baryons were characterized by having greater masses than other particles that were classed as matter.

Pentaquarks are exotic baryons composed of four quarks and one antiquark. In 2015, the LHCb collaboration at CERN definitively reported the observation of pentaquark states in the decay of bottom lambda baryons (Λ⁰
_b).^[1] Since then, additional pentaquark states have been discovered, including new observations in 2019 and 2022. While primarily created in laboratory conditions, pentaquarks might also form naturally during neutron star formation.^[2][3][4]

Since baryons are composed of quarks, they participate in the strong interaction. Leptons, on the other hand, are not composed of quarks and as such do not participate in the strong interaction. The best known baryons are protons and neutrons, which make up most of the mass of the visible matter in the universe, whereas electrons, the other major component of atoms, are leptons. Each baryon has a corresponding antiparticle, known as an antibaryon, in which quarks are replaced by their corresponding antiquarks. For example, a proton is made of two up quarks and one down quark, while its corresponding antiparticle, the antiproton, is made of two up antiquarks and one down antiquark.