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Forms of matter that are not composed of molecules and are organized by different forces can also be considered different states of matter. Superfluids (like Fermionic condensate) and the quark–gluon plasma are examples. In a chemical equation, the state of matter of the chemicals may be shown as (s) for solid, (l) for liquid, and (g) for gas.
Such states of matter are studied in condensed matter physics. In extreme conditions found in some stars and in the early universe, atoms break into their constituents and matter exists as some form of degenerate matter or quark matter. Such states of matter are studied in high-energy physics.
Particle physics or high-energy physics is the study of fundamental particles and forces that constitute matter and radiation. The field also studies combinations of elementary particles up to the scale of protons and neutrons , while the study of combination of protons and neutrons is called nuclear physics .
Elementary-particle masses and the differences between electromagnetism (mediated by the photon) and the weak force (mediated by the W and Z bosons) are critical to many aspects of the structure of microscopic (and hence macroscopic) matter. In electroweak theory, the Higgs boson generates the masses of the leptons (electron, muon, and tau) and ...
The particle state is more precisely characterized by the associated projective Hilbert space, also called ray space, since two vectors that differ by a nonzero scalar factor correspond to the same physical quantum state represented by a ray in Hilbert space, which is an equivalence class in and, under the natural projection map , an element of .
Matter waves are a central part of the theory of quantum mechanics, being half of wave–particle duality. At all scales where measurements have been practical, matter exhibits wave -like behavior. For example, a beam of electrons can be diffracted just like a beam of light or a water wave.
The mathematical similarities between the expressions for shear viscocity, thermal conductivity and diffusion coefficient of the ideal (dilute) gas is not a coincidence; It is a direct result of the Onsager reciprocal relations (i.e. the detailed balance of the reversible dynamics of the particles), when applied to the convection (matter flow ...
Exotic matter is a concept of particle physics, which may include dark matter and dark energy but goes further to include any hypothetical material that violates one or more of the properties of known forms of matter.