Once defined, a PDG Identifier is guaranteed to not change and can thus be used in other systems as a permanent reference to PDG data. Note that although the meaning of a given PDG Identifier will not change, there is no guarantee that the corresponding data will be included into future editions of the Review of Particle Physics.
Each PDG Identifier consists of a single string without embedded spaces. PDG Identifiers are not case-sensitive. More details on PDG Identifiers can be found in this proposal.
Future versions of pdgLive will directly support PDG Identifiers both for viewing and for downloading the data associated with a given PDG Identifier.
PDG Identifiers for the 2019 edition of the Review of Particle Physics:
- List of PDG Identifiers with short descriptions (JSON, version: 2019v0, May 21, 2019)
- References used in the Listings with corresponding PDG Identifiers (JSON, version: 2019v0, May 21, 2019)
PDG Identifiers for the 2018 edition of the Review of Particle Physics:
- NOTE: starting with the 2018 edition, the lists of PDG identifiers and references are provided in JSON format. For this edition, the old text format is still available.
- List of PDG Identifiers with short descriptions (JSON, version: 2018v1, February 12, 2019) and version in old text format
- References used in the Listings with corresponding PDG Identifiers (JSON, version: 2018v1, February 12, 2019) and version in old text format
PDG Identifiers for the 2017 edition of the Review of Particle Physics:
- List of PDG Identifiers with short descriptions (version: 2017v0, May 31, 2017)
- References used in the Listings with corresponding PDG Identifiers (version: 2017v0, May 31, 2017)
This file uses a comma-separated value format (CSV), where the first 3 fields denote the reference (either in the format "CODEN,voluem,page" or "SLAC-IRN,,,") and the remaining fields provide a list of PDG Identifiers associated with this reference.
The lists of PDG Identifiers and references are updated for each published edition of the Review of Particle Physics. Additional updates may occur in order to account for errata in the Review of Particle Physics, or to correct mistakes.
The latest version of the above lists can be access through the following links:
- http://pdg.lbl.gov/current/PDGIdentifiers.json (latest list of PDG Identifiers)
- http://pdg.lbl.gov/current/PDGIdentifiers-references.json (latest references with PDG Identifiers)