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Elementary particle
In particle physics, an elementary particle or fundamental particle is a particle not known to have substructure; that is, it is not known to be made up of smaller particles. If an elementary particle truly has no substructure, then it is one of the basic building blocks of the universe from which all other particles are made. In the Standard Model, the quarks, leptons, and gauge bosons are elementary particles.[1][2] Historically, the hadrons (mesons and baryons such as the proton and neutron) and even whole atoms were once regarded as elementary particles. A central feature in elementary particle theory is the early 20th century idea of “quanta”, which revolutionized the understanding of electromagnetic radiation and brought about quantum mechanics. For mathematical purposes, elementary particles are normally treated as point particles, although some particle theories such as string theory posit a physical dimension.
Layman’s Overview
There are 36 kinds of elementary particles (38 if the hypothesized graviton and Higgs boson are included). There are 12 kinds of matter particles and 12 kinds of force-communicating particles, but for each matter particle, there is a corresponding anti-particle, making 36 kinds of particles in all.
The matter particles come in 3 generations: the particles in each successive generation have greater mass but are otherwise the same as their corresponding particles in the first generation. Only particles of the first generation are stable (the particles of the other generations tending to decay into other particles). They are the up quark, the down quark, the electron, and the electron neutrino.
The force-communicating particles are the 8 gluons of the strong nuclear force, the 3 weak bosons of the weak nuclear force (the double-u minus, the double-u plus, and the zed bosons), and the photon of the electromagnetic force.
Three quarks are bound together by the gluons of the strong nuclear force to make either a proton or a neutron (two up-quarks and one down-quark makes a proton whereas one up-quark and two down-quarks makes a neutron). Protons and neutrons are bound together by a residual effect of the strong nuclear force to make the nucleus of an atom. The weak bosons of the weak nuclear force decay into or interact with matter particles, for example turning an up quark into a down quark. The nucleus of an atom is surrounded by electrons, which are held in place by the photons of the electromagnetic force. All matter of which we have direct experience is made out of atoms.
Of the matter particles, the electron-neutrino is the odd one out since it does not form a part of atoms and hardly interacts with the other particles at all, only doing so through the weak nuclear force. Of the force-communicating particles, the double-u minus boson is the odd one out since it is the only one with a corresponding anti-particle, the double-u plus boson.
A further complication is that the quarks have a strong nuclear charge which can be either ‘red’, ‘green’, or ‘blue’, and so one can count three times as many quarks, making instead a total of 60 elementary particles (62 if the Higgs boson and the graviton are included).
A final complication occurs because of quantum mechanical spin. The matter particles can occur with spin in one of two amounts whereas the force-communicating particles can occur with three different amounts of spin, and so one can count twice as many matter particles and three times as many force-communicating particles, making 132 particles altogether. The graviton can have five different amounts of spin, and the Higgs boson has zero, so the final count of the elementary particles (if the gravitons and the Higgs boson are included) is 138.
Incidentally the matter particles of the other generations have been given slightly different names from their first generation counterparts: the second generation of matter particles are called the charm quark, the strange quark, the muon, and the muon-neutrino, and the third generation of matter particles are called the top quark, the bottom quark, the tau, and the tau-neutrino. The 8 gluons of the strong nuclear force are referred to by their ‘colors’ and so don’t have straightforward names. The anti-particle of the electron has been given the name the positron (since it differs from the electron only by its electromagnetic charge, which is positive instead of negative). The graviton is hypothesized to be the force-communicating particle of the gravitational force (somewhat in conflict with Einstein’s general relativity, which says there is no such force and that instead spacetime is curved), and the hypothesized Higgs boson confers the property of ‘having mass’ on the other particles and itself.
Overview
An overview of the various families of elementary and composite particles, and the theories describing their interactions
All elementary particles are either bosons or fermions (depending on their spin). The spin-statistics theorem identifies the resulting quantum statistics that differentiates fermions from bosons. According to this methodology: particles normally associated with matter are fermions. They have half-integer spin and are divided into twelve flavours. Particles associated with fundamental forces are bosons and they have integer spin.[3]
- Fermions:
- Quarks — up, down, charm, strange, top, bottom
- Leptons — electron neutrino, electron, muon neutrino, muon, tau neutrino, tau
- Bosons:
- Gauge bosons — gluon, W and Z bosons, photon
- Other bosons — Higgs boson, graviton
Common elementary particles
Several estimates imply that practically all the matter, when measured by mass, in the visible universe (not including dark matter) is in the protons of hydrogen atoms, and that roughly 1080 protons exist in the visible universe (Eddington number), and roughly 1080 atoms exist in the visible universe.[4] Each proton is, in turn, composed of 3 elementary particles: two up-quarks and one down-quark. Neutrons and other particles heavier than protons, as well as helium and other atoms with more than one proton, are so rare that their total mass in the visible universe is much less than the total mass of protons in hydrogen atoms. Lighter particles of matter, although equal in number to protons (electrons) or vastly more numerous than protons (neutrinos), are so much lighter than protons, that their total mass in the visible universe is again much less than the total mass of all protons.
Some estimates imply that practically all the matter, when measured by numbers of particles, in the visible universe (not including dark matter) is in the form of neutrinos, and that roughly 1086 elementary particles of matter exist in the visible universe, mostly neutrinos.[5]
Some estimates imply that roughly 1097 elementary particles exist in the visible universe (not including dark matter), mostly photons, gravitons, and other massless force carriers.[5]
Standard Model
Main article: Standard ModelThe Standard Model of particle physics contains 12 flavors of elementary fermions, plus their corresponding antiparticles, as well as elementary bosons that mediate the forces and the still undiscovered Higgs boson. However, the Standard Model is widely considered to be a provisional theory rather than a truly fundamental one, since it is not known if it is compatible with Einstein’s general relativity. There are likely to be hypothetical elementary particles not described by the Standard Model, such as the graviton, the particle that would carry the gravitational force or the sparticles, supersymmetric partners of the ordinary particles.
Fundamental fermions
Main article: FermionThe 12 fundamental fermionic flavours are divided into three generations of four particles each. Six of the particles are quarks. The remaining six are leptons, three of which are neutrinos, and the remaining three of which have an electric charge of −1: the electron and its two cousins, the muon and the tau.
Particle Generations Leptons First generation Second generation Third generation Name Symbol Name Symbol Name Symbol electron e−muon μ−
tau τ−
electron neutrino ν
e muon neutrino ν
μ tau neutrino ν
τ Quarks First generation Second generation Third generation up quark u charm quark c top quark t down quark d strange quark s bottom quark b
Antiparticles
Main article: AntimatterThere are also 12 fundamental fermionic antiparticles which correspond to these 12 particles. The antielectron (positron) e+
is the electron’s antiparticle and has an electric charge of +1 and so on:
antimuon μ+
antitau τ+
electron antineutrino ν
e muon antineutrino ν
μ tau antineutrino ν
τ Antiquarks First generation Second generation Third generation up antiquark u charm antiquark c top antiquark t down antiquark d strange antiquark s bottom antiquark b
Quarks
Main article: QuarkIsolated quarks and antiquarks have never been detected, a fact explained by confinement. Every quark carries one of three color-charges of the strong interaction; antiquarks similarly carry anticolor. Color-charged particles interact via gluon exchange in the same way that charged particles interact via photon exchange. However, gluons are themselves color-charged, resulting in an amplification of the strong force as color-charged particles are separated. Unlike the electromagnetic force which diminishes as charged particles separate, color-charged particles feel increasing force.
However, color-charged particles may combine to form color neutral composite particles called hadrons. A quark may pair up with an antiquark: the quark has a color and the antiquark has the corresponding anticolor. The color and anticolor cancel out, forming a color neutral meson. Alternatively, three quarks can exist together, one quark being “red”, another “blue”, another “green”. These three colored quarks together form a color-neutral baryon. Symmetrically, three antiquarks with the colors “antired”, “antiblue” and “antigreen” can form a color-neutral antibaryon.
Quarks also carry fractional electric charges, but since they are confined within hadrons whose charges are all integral, fractional charges have never been isolated. Note that quarks have electric charges of either +2/3 or −1/3, whereas antiquarks have corresponding electric charges of either −2/3 or +1/3.
Evidence for the existence of quarks comes from deep inelastic scattering: firing electrons at nuclei to determine the distribution of charge within nucleons (which are baryons). If the charge is uniform, the electric field around the proton should be uniform and the electron should scatter elastically. Low-energy electrons do scatter in this way, but above a particular energy, the protons deflect some electrons through large angles. The recoiling electron has much less energy and a jet of particles is emitted. This inelastic scattering suggests that the charge in the proton is not uniform but split among smaller charged particles: quarks.
Fundamental bosons
Main article: BosonIn the Standard Model, vector (spin-1) bosons (gluons, photons, and the W and Z bosons) mediate forces, while the Higgs boson (spin-0) is responsible for particles having intrinsic mass.
Gluons
Main article: GluonGluons are the mediators of the strong interaction and carry both colour and anticolour. Although gluons are massless, they are never observed in detectors due to colour confinement; rather, they produce jets of hadrons, similar to single quarks. The first evidence for gluons came from annihilations of electrons and antielectrons at high energies which sometimes produced three jets — a quark, an antiquark, and a gluon.
Electroweak bosons
Main article: W and Z bosonsThere are three weak gauge bosons: W+, W−, and Z0; these mediate the weak interaction. The massless photon mediates the electromagnetic interaction.
Higgs boson
Main article: Higgs bosonAlthough the weak and electromagnetic forces appear quite different to us at everyday energies, the two forces are theorized to unify as a single electroweak force at high energies. This prediction was clearly confirmed by measurements of cross-sections for high-energy electron-proton scattering at the HERA collider at DESY. The differences at low energies is a consequence of the high masses of the W and Z bosons, which in turn are a consequence of the Higgs mechanism. Through the process of spontaneous symmetry breaking, the Higgs selects a special direction in electroweak space that causes three electroweak particles to become very heavy (the weak bosons) and one to remain massless (the photon). Although the Higgs mechanism has become an accepted part of the Standard Model, the Higgs boson itself has not yet been observed in detectors. Indirect evidence for the Higgs boson suggests its mass lies below 200-250 GeV.[6] In this case, the LHC experiments may be able to discover this last missing piece of the Standard Model.
Beyond the Standard Model
Although all experimental evidence confirms the predictions of the Standard Model, many physicists find this model to be unsatisfactory due to its many undetermined parameters, many fundamental particles, the non-observation of the Higgs boson and other more theoretical considerations such as the hierarchy problem. There are many speculative theories beyond the Standard Model which attempt to rectify these deficiencies.
Grand unification
Main article: Grand Unified TheoryOne extension of the Standard Model attempts to combine the electroweak interaction with the strong interaction into a single ‘grand unified theory’ (GUT). Such a force would be spontaneously broken into the three forces by a Higgs-like mechanism. The most dramatic prediction of grand unification is the existence of X and Y bosons, which cause proton decay. However, the non-observation of proton decay at Super-Kamiokande rules out the simplest GUTs, including SU(5) and SO(10).
Supersymmetry
Main article: SupersymmetrySupersymmetry extends the Standard Model by adding an additional class of symmetries to the Lagrangian. These symmetries exchange fermionic particles with bosonic ones. Such a symmetry predicts the existence of supersymmetric particles, abbreviated as sparticles, which include the sleptons, squarks, neutralinos and charginos. Each particle in the Standard Model would have a superpartner whose spin differs by 1/2 from the ordinary particle. Due to the breaking of supersymmetry, the sparticles are much heavier than their ordinary counterparts; they are so heavy that existing particle colliders would not be powerful enough to produce them. However, some physicists believe that sparticles will be detected when the Large Hadron Collider at CERN begins running.
String theory
Main article: String theoryString Theory is a model of physics where all “particles” that make up matter are composed of strings (measuring at the Planck length) that exist in an 11-dimensional (according to M-theory, the leading version) universe. These strings vibrate at different frequencies which determine mass, electric charge, color charge, and spin. A string can be open (a line) or closed in a loop (a one-dimensional sphere, like a circle). As a string moves through space it sweeps out something called a world sheet. String theory predicts 1- to 10-branes (a 1-brane being a string and a 10-brane being a 10-dimensional object) which prevent tears in the “fabric” of space using the uncertainty principle (e.g. the electron orbiting a hydrogen atom has the probability, albeit small, that it could be anywhere else in the universe at any given moment).
String theory proposes that our universe is merely a 4-brane, inside which exist the 3 space dimensions and the 1 time dimension that we observe. The remaining 6 theoretical dimensions are either very tiny and curled up (and too small to affect our universe in any way) or simply do not/cannot exist in our universe (because they exist in a grander scheme called the “multiverse” outside our known universe).
Some predictions of the string theory include existence of extremely massive counterparts of ordinary particles due to vibrational excitations of the fundamental string and existence of a massless spin-2 particle behaving like the graviton
Technicolor
Main article: Technicolor (physics)Technicolor theories try to modify the Standard model in a minimal way by introducing a new QCD-like interaction. This means one adds a new theory of so called Techniquarks, interacting via so called Technigluons. The main idea is that the Higgs-Boson is not an elementary particle but a bound state of these objects.
Preon theory
Main article: PreonAccording to preon theory there are one or more orders of particles more fundamental than those (or most of those) found in the Standard Model. The most fundamental of these are normally called preons, which is derived from “pre-quarks”. In essence, preon theory tries to do for the Standard Model what the Standard Model did for the particle zoo that came before it. Most models assume that almost everything in the Standard Model can be explained in terms of three to half a dozen more fundamental particles and the rules that govern their interactions. Interest in preons has waned since the simplest models were experimentally ruled out in the 1980s.
Acceleron theory
Accelerons are the hypothetical subatomic particles which integrally link the newfound mass of the neutrino and to the dark energy conjectured to be accelerating the expansion of the universe.[7]
Theoretically, neutrinos are influenced by a new force resulting from their interactions with accelerons. Dark energy results as the universe tries to pull neutrinos apart.[7]
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