Dalitz plot

The Dalitz plot is a scatterplot often used in particle physics to represent the relative frequency of various (kinematically distinct) manners in which the products of certain (otherwise similar) three-body decays may move apart.

It serves to distinguish and to quantify whether and which fraction of those decays proceeded either resonantly as a (generally very rapid) succession of two-body decay stages, or non-resonantly, i.e. directly into the three decay products.

R.H. Dalitz introduced this technique in 1953 to study decays of tau leptons (which at that time were still referred to as "tau-mesons"). It can be adapted to the analysis of four-body decays as well.

References

• R.H. Dalitz, Phil. Mag.44, 1068 (1953).
• E. Fabri, Nuovo Cimento11, 479 (1954).