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The Standard Model of particle physics is the theory describing three of the four known fundamental forces (electromagnetic, weak and strong interactions – excluding gravity) in the universe and classifying all known elementary particles.
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 .
String theory is a model of physics whereby all "particles" that make up matter are composed of strings (measuring at the Planck length) that exist in an 11-dimensional (according to M-theory, the leading version) or 12-dimensional (according to F-theory [17]) universe. These strings vibrate at different frequencies that determine mass ...
This article describes the mathematics of the Standard Model of particle physics, a gauge quantum field theory containing the internal symmetries of the unitary product group SU(3) × SU(2) × U(1). The theory is commonly viewed as describing the fundamental set of particles – the leptons , quarks , gauge bosons and the Higgs boson .
This blends particle physics with field theory. Even among particle physicists, the exact definition of a particle has diverse descriptions. These professional attempts at the definition of a particle include: [7] A particle is a collapsed wave function; A particle is a quantum excitation of a field; A particle is an irreducible representation ...
Different building blocks apply depending upon whether one defines matter on an atomic or elementary particle level. One may use a definition that matter is atoms, or that matter is hadrons, or that matter is leptons and quarks depending upon the scale at which one wishes to define matter. [101]
In the physical sciences, a particle (or corpuscule in older texts) is a small localized object which can be described by several physical or chemical properties, such as volume, density, or mass. [ 1 ] [ 2 ] They vary greatly in size or quantity, from subatomic particles like the electron , to microscopic particles like atoms and molecules ...
In the Standard Model of particle physics, electrons belong to the group of subatomic particles called leptons, which are believed to be fundamental or elementary particles. Electrons have the lowest mass of any charged lepton (or electrically charged particle of any type) and belong to the first generation of fundamental particles. [78]