Standard Model (Wikipedia)

Overview

At present, matter and energy are best understood in terms of the kinematics and interactions of elementary particles. To date, physics has reduced the laws governing the behavior and interaction of all known forms of matter and energy to a small set of fundamental laws and theories. A major goal of physics is to find the “common ground” that would unite all of these theories into one integrated theory of everything, of which all the other known laws would be special cases, and from which the behavior of all matter and energy could be derived (at least in principle)

 

Particle content

The Standard Model includes members of several classes of elementary particles (fermions, gauge bosons, and the Higgs boson), which in turn can be distinguished by other characteristics, such as color charge.

All particles can be summarized as follows:

 

Elementary particles

 

Generations: quarks

 

Up-type               Down-type

1. Up (u),            Down (d)

2. Charm (c),    Strange (s)

3. Top (t),           Bottom (b)

 

Generation: leptons

Charged                     Neutral

1. Electron (e−),    Electron neutrino (νe)

2. Muon (μ−),           Muon neutrino (νμ)

3. Tau (τ−),                Tau neutrino (ντ)

 

Four kinds (four fundamental interactions)

1. Photon (γ, Electromagnetic interaction)

2. W and Z bosons (W+, W−, Z, weak interaction)

3. Eight types of gluons (g, Strong interaction)

4. Graviton (G, Gravity, hypothetical)

 

 

Higgs boson

 

 

 

Notes:

1. The antielectron (e+) is traditionally called positron

2. The known force carrier bosons all have spin = 1 and are therefore vector bosons. The hypothetical graviton has spin = 2 and is a tensor boson; if it is a gauge boson as well is unknown.

 

Fermions

 

Summary of interactions between particles described by the Standard Model.

The Standard Model includes 12 elementary particles of spin  1⁄2 known as fermions. According to the spin-statistics theorem, fermions respect the Pauli exclusion principle. Each fermion has a corresponding antiparticle.

The fermions of the Standard Model are classified according to how they interact (or equivalently, by what charges they carry). There are six quarks (up, down, charm, strange, top, bottom), and six leptons (electron, electron neutrino, muon, muon neutrino, tau, tau neutrino). Pairs from each classification are grouped together to form a generation, with corresponding particles exhibiting similar physical behavior (see table).

The defining property of the quarks is that they carry color charge, and hence, interact via the strong interaction. A phenomenon called color confinement results in quarks being very strongly bound to one another, forming color-neutral composite particles (hadrons) containing either a quark and an antiquark (mesons) or three quarks (baryons). The familiar proton and neutron are the two baryons having the smallest mass. Quarks also carry electric charge and weak isospin. Hence, they interact with other fermions both electromagnetically and via the weak interaction.

The remaining six fermions do not carry colour charge and are called leptons. The three neutrinos do not carry electric charge either, so their motion is directly influenced only by the weak nuclear force, which makes them notoriously difficult to detect.

However, by virtue of carrying an electric charge, the electron, muon, and tau all interact electromagnetically.

Each member of a generation has greater mass than the corresponding particles of lower generations. The first generation charged particles do not decay; hence all ordinary (baryonic) matter is made of such particles. Specifically, all atoms consist of electrons orbiting around atomic nuclei, ultimately constituted of up and down quarks. Second and third generation charged particles, on the other hand, decay with very short half lives, and are observed only in very high-energy environments. Neutrinos of all generations also do not decay, and pervade the universe, but rarely interact with baryonic matter.

Generations of matter

Type	First	Second	Third
Quarks
up-type	up	charm	top
down-type	down	strange	bottom
Leptons
charged	electron	muon	tau
neutral	electron neutrino	muon neutrino	tau neutrino

Fermions and bosons

Those particles with half-integer spins, such as 1/2, 3/2, 5/2, are known as fermions, while those particles with integer spins, such as 0, 1, 2, are known as bosons. The two families of particles obey different rules and broadly have different roles in the world around us. A key distinction between the two families is that fermions obey the Pauli exclusion principle; that is, there cannot be two identical fermions simultaneously having the same quantum numbers (meaning, roughly, having the same position, velocity and spin direction). In contrast, bosons obey the rules of Bose–Einstein statistics and have no such restriction, so they may “bunch together” even if in identical states. Also, composite particles can have spins different from their component particles. For example, a helium atom in the ground state has spin 0 and behaves like a boson, even though the quarks and electrons which make it up are all fermions.

This has profound consequences:

• Quarks and leptons (including electrons and neutrinos), which make up what is classically known as matter, are all fermions with spin 1/2. The common idea that “matter takes up space” actually comes from the Pauli exclusion principle acting on these particles to prevent the fermions that make up matter from being in the same quantum state. Further compaction would require electrons to occupy the same energy states, and therefore a kind of pressure (sometimes known as degeneracy pressure of electrons) acts to resist the fermions being overly close.

Elementary fermions with other spins (3/2, 5/2, etc.) are not known to exist.

• Elementary particles which are thought of as carrying forces are all bosons with spin 1. They include the photon which carries the electromagnetic force, the gluon (strong force), and the W and Z bosons (weak force). The ability of bosons to occupy the same quantum state is used in the laser, which aligns many photons having the same quantum number (the same direction and frequency), superfluid liquid helium resulting from helium-4 atoms being bosons, and superconductivity where pairs of electrons (which individually are fermions) act as single composite bosons.

Elementary bosons with other spins (0, 2, 3 etc.) were not historically known to exist, although they have received considerable theoretical treatment and are well established within their respective mainstream theories. In particular, theoreticians have proposed the graviton (predicted to exist by some quantum gravity theories) with spin 2, and the Higgs boson (explaining electroweak symmetry breaking) with spin 0. Since 2013, the Higgs boson with spin 0 has been considered proven to exist. It is the first scalar elementary particle (spin 0) known to exist in nature.

A Wikipédiából, a szabad enciklopédiából

Szokásos és egzotikus hadronok

A részecskefizikában hadronnak nevezzük az olyan összetett szubatomi részecskéket, amelyeknek összetevői kvarkok és gluonok

A „hagyományos” hadronok a Gell-Mann kvarkmodelljének megfelelő, azaz 3 kvarkból vagy kvark-antikvark párból álló hadronok.

Ezek között:

1/ A barionok három kvarkból (az antibarionok pedig három antikvarkból) álló feles spinű részecskék, azaz fermionok.

Fő példái a nukleonok: a proton és a neutron

2/A mezonok egy kvarkból és egy antikvarkból állnak, mint a pionok, kaonok és egy csomó más részecske. Egyes spinű részecskék, azaz bozonok.

Egyfajta sematikus ábrázolásuk is elérhető volt. L. alább:

The secret life of Higgs bosons

02/20/18

By Sarah Charley

Are these mass-giving particles hanging out with dark matter?

The Higgs boson has existed since the earliest moments of our universe. Its directionless field permeates all of space and entices transient particles to slow down and burgeon with mass. Without the Higgs field, there could be no stable structures; the universe would be cold, dark and lifeless.

Many scientists are hoping that the Higgs boson will help them understand phenomena not predicted by the Standard Model, physicists’ field guide to the subatomic world. While the Standard Model is an ace at predicting the the properties of all known subatomic particles, it falls short on things like gravity, the accelerating expansion of the universe, the supernatural speeds of spinning galaxies, the absurd excess of matter over antimatter, and beyond.

“We can use the Higgs boson as a tool to look for new physics that might not readily interact with our standard set of particles,” says Darin Acosta, a physicist at the University of Florida.

In particular, there’s hope that the Higgs boson might interact with dark matter, thought to be a widespread but never directly detected kind of matter that outnumbers regular matter five to one. This theoretical massive particle makes itself known through its gravitational attraction. Physicists see its fingerprint all over the cosmos in the rotational speed of galaxies, the movements of galaxy clusters and the bending of distant light. Even though dark matter appears to be everywhere, scientists have yet to find a tool that can bridge the light and dark sectors.

If the Higgs field is the only vendor of mass in the cosmos, then dark matter must be a client. This means that the Higgs boson, the spokesparticle of the Higgs field, must have some relationship with dark matter particles.

“It could be that dark matter aids in the production of Higgs bosons, or that Higgs bosons can transform into dark matter particles as they decay,” Acosta says. “It’s simple on paper, but the challenge is finding evidence of it happening, especially when so many parts of the equation are completely invisible.”

The particle that wasn’t there

To find evidence of the Higgs boson flirting with dark matter, scientists must learn how to see the invisible. Scientists never see the Higgs boson directly; in fact, they discovered the Higgs boson by tracing the particles it produces as it decays. Now, they want to precisely measure how frequently the Higgs boson transforms into different types of particles. It’s not easy.

“All we can see with our detector is the last step of the decay, which we call the final state,” says Will Buttinger, a CERN research fellow. “In many cases, the Higgs is not the parent of the particles we see in the final state, but the grandparent.”

The Standard Model not only predicts all the different possible decays of Higgs bosons, but how favorable each decay is. For instance, it predicts that about 60 percent of Higgs bosons will transform into a pair of bottom quarks, whereas only 0.2 percent will transform into a pair of photons. If the experimental results show Higgs bosons decaying into certain particles more or less often than predicted, it could mean that a few Higgs bosons are sneaking off and transforming into dark matter.

Of course, these kinds of precision measurements cannot tell scientists if the Higgs is evolving into dark matter as part of its decay path—only that it is behaving strangely. To catch the Higgs in the act, scientists need irrefutable evidence of the Higgs schmoozing with dark matter.

“How do we see invisible things?” asks Buttinger. “By the influence it has on what we can see.”

For example, humans cannot see the wind, but we can look outside our windows and immediately know if it’s windy based whether or not trees are swaying. Scientists can look for dark matter particles in a similar way.

“For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction,” Buttinger says. “If we see particles shooting off in one direction, we know that there must be something shooting off in the other direction.”

If a Higgs boson transforms into a visible particle paired with a dark matter particle, the solitary tracks of the visible particles will have an odd and inexplicable trajectory—an indication that, perhaps, a dark matter particle is escaping.

The Higgs boson is the newest tool scientists have to explore the uncharted terrain within and beyond the Standard Model. The continued research at the LHC and its future upgrades will enable scientists to characterize this reticent particle and learn its close-held secrets.

Science

Scientists discover atoms inside the orbiting electrons of a ‘giant atom’

UPI Mon, Feb 26 3:51 PM GMT+1

Feb. 26 (UPI) — Scientists have discovered an atom filled with atoms. The atom’s electrons orbit at such a great distance that there’s room for other atoms. The atoms within the “giant atom” form weak bonds, producing a new exotic state of matter — what scientists have dubbed “Rydberg polarons.” The discovery combines a pair of atomic phenomenon, both of which can only be studied under extremely cold conditions: Bose-Einstein condensates and Rydberg atoms. A Bose-Einstein condensate is a unique state of matter observed only at temperatures approaching absolute zero. Rydberg atoms are atoms featuring a single electron in a distant orbit and a highly excited state…