elementary particles

The Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th ed.

elementary particles

elementary particles, the most basic physical constituents of the universe.

Basic Constituents of Matter

Molecules are built up from the atom, which is the basic unit of any chemical element. The atom in turn is made from the proton, neutron, and electron. It turns out that protons and neutrons are made of varieties of a still smaller particle called the quark. At this time it appears that the two basic constituents of matter are the lepton (of which the electron is one type) and quark; there are believed to be six types of each. Each type of lepton and quark also has a corresponding antiparticle: a particle that has the same mass but opposite electrical charge and magnetic moment. An isolated quark has never been found—quarks appear to almost always be found in pairs or triplets with other quarks and antiquarks (the resulting particles being classed as hadrons, more than 200 of which have been identified). Four-, five-, and six-quark particles have also been theoretically predicted; there is some experimental evidence for extremely short-lived four-quark particles in the very high-energy environments created by collisions in particle accelerators.

The most familiar lepton is the electron; the other five leptons are the muon, the tau particle, and the three types of neutrino associated with each: the electron neutrino, the muon neutrino, and the tau neutrino. The six quarks have been whimsically named up, down, charm, strange, top (or truth), and bottom (or beauty); the top quark, which has a mass greater than an entire atom of gold, is about 35 times heavier than the next biggest quark and may be the heaviest particle nature has ever created. The quarks found in ordinary matter are the up and down quarks, from which protons and neutrons are made. A proton, for instance, consists of two up quarks and a down quark, and a neutron consists of two down quarks and an up quark. The pentaquark consists of two up quarks, two down quarks, and the strange antiquark. (Quarks have fractional charges of one third or two thirds of the basic charge of the electron or proton.)

Carriers of the Basic Forces

The elementary particles of matter interact with one another through four distinct types of force: gravitation, electromagnetism, and the forces from strong interactions and weak interactions. A given particle experiences certain of these forces, while it may be immune to others. The gravitational force is experienced by all particles. The electromagnetic force is experienced only by charged particles, such as the electron and muon. The strong nuclear force is responsible for the structure of the nucleus, and only particles made up of quarks participate in the strong nuclear interaction or force. Other particles, including the electron, muon, and the three neutrinos, do not participate in the strong nuclear interactions but only in the weak nuclear interactions associated with particle decay.

Each force is carried by an elementary particle. The electromagnetic force, for instance, is mediated by the photon, the basic quantum of electromagnetic radiation. The strong force is mediated by the gluon, the weak force by the W and Z particles, and gravity is thought to be mediated by the graviton. Quantum field theory applied to the understanding of the electromagnetic force is called quantum electrodynamics, and applied to the understanding of strong interactions is called quantum chromodynamics. In 1979 Sheldon Glashow, Steven Weinberg, and Abdus Salam were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for their work in demonstrating that the electromagnetic and weak forces are really manifestations of a single electroweak force. A unified theory that would explain all four forces as manifestations of a single force is being sought.

Standard Model of Particle Physics



Classification of Elementary Particles

Two types of statistics are used to describe elementary particles, and the particles are classified on the basis of which statistics they obey. Fermi-Dirac statistics apply to those particles restricted by the Pauli exclusion principle; particles obeying the Fermi-Dirac statistics are known as fermions. Leptons and quarks are fermions. Two fermions are not allowed to occupy the same quantum state. Bose-Einstein statistics apply to all particles not covered by the exclusion principle, and such particles are known as bosons. The number of bosons in a given quantum state is not restricted. In general, fermions compose nuclear and atomic structure, while bosons act to transmit forces between fermions; the photon, gluon, and the W and Z particles are bosons.

Basic categories of particles have also been distinguished according to other particle behavior. The strongly interacting particles were classified as either mesons or baryons; it is now known that mesons consist of quark-antiquark pairs and that baryons consist of quark triplets. The meson class members are more massive than the leptons but generally less massive than the proton and neutron, although some mesons are heavier than these particles. The lightest members of the baryon class are the proton and neutron, and the heavier members are known as hyperons. In the meson and baryon classes are included a number of particles that cannot be detected directly because their lifetimes are so short that they leave no tracks in a cloud chamber or bubble chamber. These particles are known as resonances, or resonance states, because of an analogy between their manner of creation and the resonance of an electrical circuit.

See table entitled Elementary Particles.

Conservation Laws and Symmetry





The Discovery of Elementary Particles

The first subatomic particle to be discovered was the electron, identified in 1897 by J. J. Thomson. After the nucleus of the atom was discovered in 1911 by Ernest Rutherford, the nucleus of ordinary hydrogen was recognized to be a single proton. In 1932 the neutron was discovered. An atom was seen to consist of a central nucleus—containing protons and, except for ordinary hydrogen, neutrons—surrounded by orbiting electrons. However, other elementary particles not found in ordinary atoms immediately began to appear.

In 1928 the relativistic quantum theory of P. A. M. Dirac hypothesized the existence of a positively charged electron, or positron, which is the antiparticle of the electron; it was first detected in 1932. Difficulties in explaining beta decay (see radioactivity) led to the prediction of the neutrino in 1930, and by 1934 the existence of the neutrino was firmly established in theory (although it was not actually detected until 1956). Another particle was also added to the list: the photon, which had been first suggested by Einstein in 1905 as part of his quantum theory of the photoelectric effect.

The next particles discovered were related to attempts to explain the strong interactions, or strong nuclear force, binding nucleons (protons and neutrons) together in an atomic nucleus. In 1935 Hideki Yukawa suggested that a meson (a charged particle with a mass intermediate between those of the electron and the proton) might be exchanged between nucleons. The meson emitted by one nucleon would be absorbed by another nucleon; this would produce a strong force between the nucleons, analogous to the force produced by the exchange of photons between charged particles interacting through the electromagnetic force. (It is now known, of course, that the strong force is mediated by the gluon.) The following year a particle of approximately the required mass (about 200 times that of the electron) was discovered and named the mu meson, or muon. However, its behavior did not conform to that of the theoretical particle. In 1947 the particle predicted by Yukawa was finally discovered and named the pi meson, or pion.

Both the muon and the pion were first observed in cosmic rays. Further studies of cosmic rays turned up more particles. By the 1950s these elementary particles were also being observed in the laboratory as a result of particle collisions produced by a particle accelerator.

One of the current frontiers in the study of elementary particles concerns the interface between that discipline and cosmology. The known quarks and leptons, for instance, are typically grouped in three families (where each family contains two quarks and two leptons); investigators have wondered whether additional families of elementary particles might be found. Recent work in cosmology pertaining to the evolution of the universe has suggested that there could be no more families than four, and the cosmological theory has been substantiated by experimental work at the Stanford Linear Accelerator (now SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory) and at CERN, which indicates that there are no families of elementary particles other than the three that are known today.


See S. Glashow, Interactions: A Journey through the Mind of a Particle Physicist and the Matter of This World (1988); L. M. Lederman and D. N. Schramm, From Quarks to the Cosmos (1989).

Notes for this article

Add a new note
One moment ...
Default project is now your active project.
Project items
Cite this article

Cited article

Citations are available only to our active members.

(Einhorn, 1992, p. 25)

(Einhorn 25)

(Einhorn 25)



Cited article

elementary particles


Text size Smaller Larger Reset View mode
Search within

Search within this article

Look up

Look up a word

  • Dictionary
  • Thesaurus
Please submit a word or phrase above.
Print this page

Print this page

Why can't I print more than one page at a time?

Full screen
Items saved from this article
  • Highlights & Notes
  • Citations
Some of your highlights are legacy items.



matching results for page

    Questia reader help

    How to highlight and cite specific passages


    OK, got it!

    Cited passage

    Citations are available only to our active members.






    Cited passage

    Thanks for trying Questia!


    Your work will be lost once you leave this Web page.

    Buy instant access to save your work.

    Already a member? Log in now.

    Search by... Author
    Show... All Results Primary Sources Peer-reviewed

