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juliensimon/pdg-particle-properties

PDG Particle Properties Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/STScI/CXC/SAO Part of a dataset collection on Hugging Face. Dataset description Properties of every known particle from the Particle Data Group (PDG) -- THE definitive reference for particle physics, used by every particle physicist worldwide. The PDG, based at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, has published its Review of Particle Physics since 1957 -- the single most cited publication in high-energy… See the full description on the dataset page: https://huggingface.co/datasets/juliensimon/pdg-particle-properties.

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Dataset Card

PDG Particle Properties

<div align="center"> <img src="banner.jpg" alt="Cassiopeia A supernova remnant in X-ray, optical, and infrared light" width="400"> <p><em>Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/STScI/CXC/SAO</em></p> </div>

Part of a [dataset collection](https://huggingface.co/collections/juliensimon/physics-datasets-69c2d4682d37dfdb77447bd7) on Hugging Face.

Dataset description

Properties of every known particle from the Particle Data Group (PDG) -- THE definitive reference for particle physics, used by every particle physicist worldwide.

The PDG, based at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, has published its Review of Particle Physics since 1957 -- the single most cited publication in high-energy physics. The PDG compiles and critically evaluates measurements from thousands of experiments at facilities like CERN's Large Hadron Collider, Fermilab, KEK, and SLAC to produce world-average values for particle masses, widths, lifetimes, and quantum numbers.

The dataset covers the full spectrum of known particles: the six quarks, six leptons, and gauge bosons of the Standard Model; the Higgs boson discovered at CERN in 2012; hundreds of mesons (quark-antiquark bound states) and baryons (three-quark bound states) organized by flavor quantum numbers; and light nuclei.

This machine-readable version supports automated analysis pipelines in high-energy physics, Monte Carlo event generators, detector simulation frameworks, and educational tools. It is also valuable for machine learning applications in particle identification and anomaly detection in collider data.

This dataset is suitable for tabular classification, tabular regression tasks.

Schema

ColumnTypeDescriptionSampleNull %
pdg_idint64PDG Monte Carlo numbering scheme particle ID; e.g. 11 = electron, 13 = muon, 22 = photon, 2212 = proton; negative values denote the corresponding antiparticle10.0%
namestrPDG standard particle name including charge superscript and resonance mass where applicable (e.g. 'pi+', 'K*(892)0', 'Upsilon(1S)')d0.0%
latex_namestrLaTeX-formatted particle name for typesetting in publications (e.g. '\pi^+', 'K^*(892)^0'); render with a LaTeX engine or MathJaxd0.0%
mass_mevfloat64Particle rest mass in MeV/c^2; electron: 0.511, proton: 938.3, Higgs: 125,100; null for massless particles (photon, gluon)4.71.2%
mass_uncertainty_mevfloat64Upper (asymmetric) uncertainty on the PDG world-average mass in MeV/c^2; reflects experimental precision and averaging of multiple measurements; null when mass is null0.0791.5%
width_mevfloat64Total decay width in MeV, related to mean lifetime by tau = hbar/Gamma; Z boson: ~2,495 MeV; null for stable particles (electron, proton, photon)1420.092.0%
width_uncertainty_mevfloat64Upper (asymmetric) uncertainty on the decay width in MeV; null when width is null190.092.1%
chargefloat64Electric charge in units of the elementary charge e; quarks carry fractional charges (u/c/t: +2/3, d/s/b: -1/3); leptons and hadrons carry integer charges-0.33333333333333330.0%
spinfloat64Total spin quantum number J; fermions have half-integer spin (1/2, 3/2); gauge bosons have spin 1; the Higgs boson has spin 00.590.4%
parityInt64Intrinsic parity P under spatial inversion; +1 or -1; null for particles where parity is not defined10.0%
isospinstrIsospin quantum number I as a string (e.g. '1/2', '1', '0'); relevant for hadrons composed of u and d quarks; null for leptons and gauge bosons1/290.7%
g_parityInt64G-parity quantum number; +1 or -1; defined only for non-strange mesons with zero baryon number; null otherwise50.0%
c_parityInt64Charge-conjugation parity C; +1 or -1; defined only for electrically neutral self-conjugate particles (e.g. pi0, photon, J/psi); null for charged particles50.0%
anti_flagint64Relationship to antiparticle: 0 = own antiparticle (self-conjugate), 1 = particle (antiparticle listed separately), -1 = antiparticle entry10.0%
is_self_conjugateboolTrue if the particle is its own antiparticle (e.g. photon, pi0, Z boson, Higgs); false for particles with a distinct antiparticleFalse0.0%
lifetime_nsfloat64Mean lifetime in nanoseconds; muon: 2,197 ns, pion: 26.0 ns; null for stable particles and very short-lived resonances where only the width is quoted4.635295471485258e-1692.0%
ctau_mmfloat64Proper decay length c*tau in millimetres; pion: ~7,800 mm, B meson: ~0.45 mm; null when lifetime is null1.3896266229528344e-1392.0%

Quick stats

  • —6,506 particles in the database
  • —6,431 with measured mass
  • —522 with measured width
  • —88 self-conjugate particles
  • —Heaviest particle: Og294 (274,059 MeV)

Usage

python
from datasets import load_dataset

ds = load_dataset("juliensimon/pdg-particle-properties", split="train")
df = ds.to_pandas()
python
from datasets import load_dataset

ds = load_dataset("juliensimon/pdg-particle-properties", split="train")
df = ds.to_pandas()

# All mesons (PDG ID 100-999)
mesons = df[(df["pdg_id"].abs() >= 100) & (df["pdg_id"].abs() < 1000)]

# Mass spectrum plot
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
masses = df[df["mass_mev"].notna()]["mass_mev"]
plt.hist(masses[masses < 5000], bins=100, log=True)
plt.xlabel("Mass (MeV/c^2)")
plt.ylabel("Count")
plt.title("Particle Mass Spectrum")
plt.show()

# Stable particles (no measured width)
stable = df[df["width_mev"].isna() & df["mass_mev"].notna()]
print(f"{len(stable)} stable or long-lived particles")

Data source

https://pdg.lbl.gov/

Related datasets

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About the author

Created by Julien Simon — AI Operating Partner at Fortino Capital. Part of the Space Datasets collection.

Citation

bibtex
@dataset{pdg_particle_properties,
  title = {PDG Particle Properties},
  author = {Simon, Julien},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://huggingface.co/datasets/juliensimon/pdg-particle-properties},
  publisher = {Hugging Face},
  note = {Derived from Particle Data Group, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, https://pdg.lbl.gov/}
}

License

CC-BY-4.0