Mass / Invariant mass

Particle physicists use the word "mass" to refer to the quantity (sometimes called "rest mass") which is proportional to the inertia of the particle when it is at rest. This is the "m" both in Newton's second law of motion, F=ma, and in Einstein's equation, E=mc2 (in which E must be interpreted as the energy of the particle at rest). When a particle decays and hence no longer exists, its mass before the decay can be calculated from the energies and momenta of the decay products. The inferred value of the mass is independent of the reference frame in which the energies and momenta are measured, so that that the mass called "invariant". The concept is frequently generalized, so that for any set of particles (e.g., two leptons emerging from a collision), one can apply the same formulas to obtain an "invariant mass" (also called the “effective mass”) of the set.