The Standard Model

of Particles and Interactions

Ian Hinchliffe
26 June 2002
 What is the World Made of?
• Ancient times – 4
elements
• 19th century – atoms
• Early 20th century –
electrons, protons,
neutrons
• Today – quarks and
leptons
 The Atom in 1900...

• Atoms get rearranged

in chemical reactions
• More than 100 atoms
(H, He, Fe …)
• Internal structure was
not understood –
known to have electric
charge inside
 Periodic Table
• Elements are grouped
into families with
similar properties (e.g.
Inert gasses He, Ne
etc.) led to the
Periodic Table
• This suggested an new
structure with simpler
building blocks
 Models of the Atom
• Experiments broke
atoms apart
• Very light negative
charged particles
(electrons)
surrounding a heavy
positive nucleus
• Atom, is mostly
“empty”
 The Nucleus
• Nucleus is small and
dense; it was thought
for a while to be
fundamental
• But still as many
nucleii as atoms
• Simplification – all
nucleii are made up of
charged protons and
neutral neutrons
 Quarks
• We now know that even
protons and neutrons are
not fundamental
• They are made up of
smaller particles called
quarks
• So far, quarks appear to be
fundamental (“point-like”)
 The Modern Atom
• A cloud of electrons in
constant motion around
the nucleus
• And protons and neutrons
in motion in the nucleus
• And quarks in motion
within the protons and
neutrons
 Size inside atoms
• The nucleus is 10,000
times smaller than the
atom
• Proton and neutron are
10 times smaller than
nucleus
• No evidence that
quarks have any size
at all !
 New Particles
• Collisions of electrons and nucleii in cosmic
rays and particle accelerators beginning in
the 1930’s led to the discovery of many new
particles
• Some were predicted but many others came
as surprises
• Muon like a heavy electron: ‘Who ordered
that?’
• At first, all of them were thought to be
fundamental
Only a few at first
These can be explained as made
of a few quarks
 What is Fundamental?
• Physicists have discovered hundreds of new
particles
• Most, we now know are not fundamental
• We have developed a theory, called The
Standard Model, which appears to explain
what we observe
• This model includes 6 quarks, 6 leptons and
13 force-related particles
 What is the World made of?
• The real world is not made of individual
quarks (more on that later)
• Quarks exist only in groups making up what
we call hadrons: (proton and neutron are
hadrons)
• E.g. a proton is 2 up quarks and 1 down
quark
• We are all made from up and down quarks
and electrons
 Matter and Antimatter
• For every particle ever
found, there is a
corresponding
antimatter particle or
antiparticle
• They look just like
matter but have the
opposite charge
• Particles are created or
destroyed in pairs
 Particles can decay
• Particles may decay, • Neutron can decay to
i.e. transform from electron and a proton
one to another • Energy appears to be
• Most are unstable missing. It is carried
• Proton and electron off by a neutrino
are stable
 Generations
• The six quarks and the six
leptons are each organized
into three generations
• The generations are heavier
“Xerox” copies
• “Who ordered the 2nd and 3rd
generations?”
• The quarks have fractional
charges (+2/3 and -1/3) The
leptons have charge -1 or 0
 What about Leptons?
• There are six leptons, three charged and three
neutral
• They appear to be point-like particles with no
internal structure
• Electrons are the most common and are the
only ones found in ordinary matter
• Muons (m) and taus (t) are heavier and
charged like the electron
• Neutrinos have no charge and very little mass
 Matter Summary
• So all the universe is made of First
Generation quarks and leptons
• We now turn to how the quarks and leptons
interact with each other, stick together and
decay
 Four Forces
• There are four
fundamental interactions
in nature
• All forces can be
attributed to these
interactions
• Gravity is attractive;
others can be repulsive
• Interactions are also
responsible for decay
 How do Particles Interact?
• Objects can interact without
touching
• How do magnets “feel” each
other to attract or repel?
• How does the sun attract the
earth?
• A force is something
communicated between objects
 Electromagnetism
• The electromagnetic
force causes opposite
charges to attract and
like charges to repel
• The carrier is called
the photon (g)
• The photon is
massless and travels at
“the speed of light”
 Residual E-M
• Normally atoms are
neutral having the
same number of
protons and electrons
• The charged parts of
one atom can attract
the charged parts of
another atom
• Can bind atoms into
molecules
Why Doesn’t a Nucleus Explode?

• A heavy nucleus
contains many
protons, all with
positive charge
• These repel each other
• Why does it not blow
apart?
 Strong Force
• In addition to their
electric charge, quarks
also carry a new kind
of charge called color
charge
• The force between
color charged particles
is the “strong force”
 The Gluon
• The strong force holds
quarks together to
form hadrons
• Its carrier particles are
called gluons; there
are 8 of these
• The strong force only
acts on very short
distances
 Color and Anti-color
• There are three color
charges and three anti-
color charges
• But note, these colors
have nothing to do
with color and visible
light, they are only a
way describing the
physics
 Colored Quarks and Gluons
• Each quark has one of
the three color charges
and each antiquark has
one of the three
anticolor charges
• Baryons and mesons
are color-neutral just
as red-green-blue
makes white light
 Quark Confinement
• Color force (QCD) gets
stronger at long
distances!!
• Color-charged particles
cannot be isolated
• Color-charged quarks are
confined in hadrons with
other quarks
• The composites are color
neutral
 Color Field
• Quarks in a hadron
exchange gluons
• If one of the quarks
is pulled away from
its neighbors, the
color field stretches
between that quark
and its neighbors
• New quark-antiquark
pairs are created in
the field
 Quarks Emit Gluons
• When a quark emits or
absorbs a gluon, the
quarks color charge
must change to
conserve color charge
• A red quark emits a
red/antiblue gluon and
changes into a blue
quark
 Residual Strong Force
• The strong force
between the quarks in
one proton and the
quarks in another
proton is strong
enough to overwhelm
the repulsive
electromagnetic force
 Weak Force
• Weak interactions are
responsible for the decay of
massive quarks and leptons
into lighter quarks and
leptons
• Example: neutron to decay
into proton + electron +
neutrino
• This is why all matter
consists of the lightest quarks
and leptons (plus neutrinos)
 Electroweak Force
• In the Standard Model, the weak and
the electromagnetic forces have been
combined into a unified electroweak
theory
• At very short distances (~10-18
meters), the weak and
electromagnetic interactions have
comparable strengths
• Force particles are photon, W and Z
 What about Gravity?

• Gravity is very weak

• Relevant at macroscopic
distances
• The gravity force carrier,
the graviton, is predicted
but has never been seen
Interaction Summary
 Quantum Mechanics
• Behavior of atoms and particles is described
by Quantum Mechanics
• Certain properties such as energy can have
only discrete values, not continuous values
• Particle properties are described by these
values (quantum numbers) such as:
– Electric Charge
– Color Charge
– Flavor
– Spin
 The Pauli Exclusion Principle
• We can use quantum
particle properties to
categorize the particles
we find
• Some particles, called
Fermions, obey the
Exclusion Principle
while others, called
Bosons, do not
Fermions and Bosons
What Holds the World Together?
• We have learned that the world is made up
of six quarks and six leptons
• Everything we see is a conglomeration of
quarks and leptons (and their antiparticles)
• There are four fundamental forces and there
are force carrier particles associated with
each force
 How does a particle decay?
• The Standard Model explains why some
particles decay into other particles
• In nuclear decay, a nucleus can split into
smaller nuclei
• When a fundamental particle decays, it has
no constituents (by definition) so it must
change into totally new particles
 The Unstable Nucleus
• We have seen that the
strong force holds the
nucleus together despite
the electromagnetic
repulsion of the protons
• However, not all nuclei
live forever
• Some decay
 Nuclear Decay
• The nucleus can split
into smaller nuclei
• This is as if the
nucleus “boiled off”
some of its pieces
• This happens in a
nuclear reactor
 Muon Decay
• Muon decay is an
example of particle
decay
• Here the end products
are not pieces of the
starting particle but
rather are totally new
particles
 Missing Mass

• In most decays, the

particles or nuclei that
remain have a total mass
that is less than the mass
of the original particle or
nucleus
• The missing mass gives
kinetic energy to the
decay products
 Particle Decay Mediators
• When a fundamental particle decays, it turns
itself into a less massive particle and a force-
carrier particle (the W boson)
• The force-carrier then emerges as other
particles
• A particle can decay if it is heavier than the
total mass of its decay products and if there
is a force to mediate the decay
 Virtual Particles
• Particles decay via force-carrier particles
• In some cases, a particle may decay via a
force-carrier that is more massive than the
initial particle
• The force-carrier particle is immediately
transformed into lower-mass particles
• The short-lived massive particle appears to
violate the law of energy conservation
 The Uncertainty Principle
• A result of the Heisenberg Uncertainty
Principle is that these high-mass particles
may come into being if they are very short-
lived.
• These particles are called virtual particles
 Different Interactions
• Strong, electromagnetic, and weak interactions all
cause particle decays. However, only weak
interactions can cause the decay of fundamental
particles into other types of particles.
• Physicists call particle types "flavors." The weak
interaction can change a charm quark into a
strange quark while emitting a virtual W boson
(charm and strange are flavors).
• Only the weak interaction (via the W boson) can
change flavor and allow the decay of a truly
fundamental particle.
 Other Interactions
• Electromagnetic Decays:
– The p0 (neutral pion) is a meson. The quark and
antiquark can annihilate; from the annihilation come
two photons. This is an example of an electromagnetic
decay.

• Strong Decays:
– The hc particle is a meson made up of a c and an anti-c.
It can undergo a strong decay into two gluons (which
emerge as hadrons).
 Annihilations
• These are not decays
but they also take
place through virtual
particles
• Annihilations of light
quarks at very high
energy can produce
very massive quarks in
the laboratory
 Antiproton Annihilation
• This bubble chamber
shows an antiproton
colliding with a proton,
annihilating and
producing eight pions
• One pion decays into a
muon and a neutrino
(which leaves no track)
 Fundamental Processes
• With what you have now learned, you can
make models of the fundamental processes
that physicists study
• These models are the foundation for
detailed calculations of what happens at a
high energy accelerator
Neutron Beta Decay
Electron-Positron Annihilation
Top Production
 Mysteries and Failures
• The Standard Model is a theory of the
universe
• It provides a good description of
phenomena observed by experiments
• It is still incomplete in many ways: why 3
generations? What is dark matter?
 Is the Standard Model Wrong?
• We need to go beyond the Standard Model
in the same way that Einstein’s Theory of
Relativity extended Newton’s laws of
mechanics
• We will need to extend the Standard Model
with something new to explain mass,
gravity, etc.
 Three Generations
• There are three sets of
quarks and three sets
of leptons
• Why are there exactly
three generations of
matter?
• Why do we see only
one in the real world?
 What About Masses?
• The Standard Model
cannot explain why a
particle has a certain mass
• Physicists have theorized
the existence of a new
field, called the Higgs
field, which interacts with
other particles to give
them mass
• So far, the Higgs has not
been seen by experiment
 Grand Unified Theory
• We believe that GUT will
unify the strong, weak and
electromagnetic forces
• All three forces would be
different aspects of the
same, unified interaction
• The three forces would
merge into one at high
enough energy
 Supersymmetry
• Some physicists
attempting to unify
gravity with the other
fundamental forces
have suggested that
every fundamental
particle should have a
massive “shadow”
particle
• Modern physics has theories for quantum
mechanics, relativity and gravity but they
do not quite work with each other
• If we lived in a world of more than three
spatial dimensions, these problems can be
resolved
• String theory suggests that in a world with
three ordinary dimensions and some
additional very small dimensions, particles
are strings and membranes
 Extra Dimensions
• String Theory requires
more than three space
dimensions
• These extra
dimensions could be
very small so that we
do not see them
• Experiments are now
searching for evidence
of extra dimensions
 Dark Matter

• It appears that the

universe is not made
of the same kind of
matter as our sun and
the stars
• The dark matter does
exert a gravitational
attraction on ordinary
matter but has not
been detected directly
 The Accelerating Universe
• Recent experiments using
Type Ia Supernovae have
shown that the universe is
still expanding and the rate
of expansion is increasing
• This acceleration must be
driven by a new
mechanism which has
been named dark energy
 The Expanding Universe
• Studies of the most
distant supernova ever
detected indicates that
the universe did go
through a phase where
the expansion slowed
down
• It is now speeding up
 Conclusion
• The Standard Model is a powerful synthesis
that explains a huge number of observations
in a simple framework. It is to physics what
evolution is to biology.
• There are many important questions beyond
the Standard Model