Elementary Particles and Their Properties

ANAND SAGAR

DEPARTMENT OF PHYSICS, CHANDIGARH UNIVERSITY, PUNJAB INDIA,140413

AUTHOR EMAIL: anandmahajan300@gmail.com

UID:22MSP10028
Abstract:
Elementary particles are the fundamental building blocks of matter. They are not made up of any
smaller particles, and they are the basic units from which all other particles are constructed.
Elementary particles are governed by the laws of quantum mechanics and relativity, and they interact
with each other through the four fundamental forces of nature: electromagnetism, the strong force, the
weak force, and gravity. There are two main types of elementary particles: fermions and bosons.
Fermions are the building blocks of matter, such as quarks and leptons. Bosons are force carriers, such
as photons and gluons. Elementary particles have a variety of properties, including mass, charge, spin,
and lifetime. Mass is the amount of matter that a particle contains. Charge is the property of a particle
that determines how it interacts with electromagnetic fields. Spin is a quantum mechanical property
that describes the angular momentum of a particle. Lifetime is the amount of time that a particle exists
before it decays into other particles.

INTRODUCTION:
The particles which are structureless, invisible and not regarded as made up of some other particles
are called elementary particles. Hundreds of the elementary particles are discovered so far. These
particles are fundamental in the sense that these particles can;t be explained as the system of other
particles.
The idea that the world is made up of fundamental particles has a long history. In about 400 B.C., the
Greek philosophers Democritus and Leucippus suggested that matter is made up of indivisible
particles which they called atoms, which is derived from a – (not) and tomos (cut or divided). This
idea remained dormant until about 1804, when John Dalton discovered that many chemical
phenomena could be explained if atoms of each element are the basic, indivisible building blocks of
matter.
Until the discovery of electron by J.J. Thomson in 1897, it was assumed that atoms were fundamental
constituent of all the matter. The discovery of the idea of quanta, the bundles of electromagnetic
radiation by Einstein in 1905 revolutionized the understanding of electromagnetic radiation and
brought about quantum mechanics. From Thomson’s discovery of electron and Rutherford’s
discovery of atomic nucleus and proton in 1911 made it apparent that atoms were not fundamental in
the sense that they have an internal structure. The discovery of neutron by James Chadwick in 1932
completed a model of atom consisting protons and neutrons surrounded by sufficient electrons to
balance the nuclear charge.
This model did not however explain the stability of nucleus. Yukawa in 1935 proposed a concept of
exchange force which is responsible for the stability of nucleus. This involves exchange of shirt lived
particles between the nucleons in the nucleus. These exchange particles are called mesons. This
concept leads to the discovery of strong interaction and weak interaction bringing the total number of
interactions to four. It also leads to the discovery of some 200 short lived elementary particles some of
which are clearly more elementary than the others.
Types of Elementary Particles:

 There are two main types of elementary particles: fermions and bosons. Fermions are
particles that have half-integer spin and obey the Pauli exclusion principle, which states that
no two identical fermions can occupy the same quantum state at the same time. Bosons are
particles that have integer spin and do not obey the Pauli exclusion principle.
 Fermions can be further divided into two categories: quarks and leptons. Quarks are the
building blocks of protons and neutrons, which are the two main constituents of the nucleus
of an atom. Leptons are a diverse group of particles that includes the electron, the muon,
the tau, and the three neutrinos.
 Bosons are also divided into two categories: force carriers and scalar particles. Force carriers
are particles that mediate the fundamental forces of nature. The photon, for example, is the
force carrier of electromagnetism. The gluon is the force carrier of the strong force. The W
and Z bosons are the force carriers of the weak force. Scalar particles are particles that have
spin 0 and do not mediate any forces. The Higgs boson is the only known scalar particle.
Properties of Elementary Particles:

Elementary particles have a variety of properties, including mass, charge, spin, and lifetime. Mass is
the amount of matter that a particle contains. Charge is the property of a particle that determines
how it interacts with electromagnetic fields. Spin is a quantum mechanical property that describe
the angular momentum of a particle. Lifetime is the amount of time that a particle exists before it
decays into other particles.

The elementary particles are characterized by their mass, charge, life-time, spin etc.

 Mass: An elementary particle has always the same rest mass. If two particles have different
rest masses, we consider them as different particles. The magnitude of the rest mass serves
as the principal label which identifies the particles uniquely. The value of the rest mass may
allow us to infer the existence of a particle even without a direct observation, just from the
conservation of energy and momentum. The neutral pion π0 was discovered in this way.

 Charge: All known elementary particles have charge positive, negative or zero. Further, the
charge is always conserved in any collision process.

 Average lifetime: All elementary particles, except photon, electron, proton and neutrinos
are unstable and undergo decay into other elementary particle of smaller mass. The decay
 probability of a particular particle is, however, independent of the length of time the particle
has lived. It is impossible to predict when a given (unstable) particle will decay. Hence an
elementary (unstable) particle has an average lifetime, which is independent of the way the
particle decays.

 Spin: Many elementary particles spin in a manner analogous to that of the earth on its axis,
but with certain differences. The spin property forms a basis for the classification of
elementary particles.

 Interactions: Four kinds of interactions between elementary particles are known:

gravitational, weak, electromagnetic and strong. Their relative magnitudes are in the ratios
10-39: 10-13: 10-2: 1.

Recent research:
 In 2022, physicists at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) discovered a new type of elementary
particle called a tetraquark. Tetraquarks are composed of four quarks, instead of the two
quarks that make up protons and neutrons.

 In 2021, physicists at the Fermilab Tevatron measured the mass of the W boson with
unprecedented precision. The W boson is a force carrier particle that mediates the weak
force.

 In 2020, physicists at the Belle II experiment in Japan observed the decay of a B meson into
two tau leptons. This decay is extremely rare, and it provides new insights into the behavior
of quarks and leptons.

Spi
Particle Mass (GeV) Charge (e) n Lifetime (s)

Tetraquar
k 1.97 0 0 10^-23

W boson 80.379 1 1 10^-25

B meson 5.279 -1 0 10^-12

CONCLUSIONS:
Here are some of the key conclusions that can be drawn from the study of elementary particles:

 Elementary particles are the fundamental building blocks of matter and the forces that
govern the universe.

 There are two main types of elementary particles: fermions and bosons. Fermions make up
matter, while bosons mediate the fundamental forces of nature.
  Elementary particles have a variety of properties, including mass, charge, spin, and lifetime.

 The Standard Model of particle physics is a theoretical framework that describes all of the
known elementary particles and their interactions. The Standard Model is very
successful, but it is not a complete theory.

The study of elementary particles is a challenging but rewarding field of research. As we learn more
about these fundamental building blocks of the universe, we gain a deeper understanding of the
laws of physics and the nature of reality itself.

REFERENCES:

 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Tree-diagram-of-Elementary-particles_fig5_301232386

 https://educatesansar.com/physics-elementary-particles/

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elementary_particle_physics
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Mode
 https://www.physics.upenn.edu/~pgl/e27/E27.pdf