Tau Lepton

Heavy unstable elementary particle in the third generation of leptons.

Core Principles & Analysis

• Discovered by Martin Perl's team at SLAC between 1974 and 1977.
• The only lepton heavy enough to decay into hadrons, which it does about two-thirds of the time.
• Its mean lifetime is just 2.9 × 10⁻¹³ seconds.

Specifications & Metrics

• MASS: 1776.86 MeV/c²
• SPIN: 1/2
• SYMBOL: τ⁻