THE STANDARD MODEL

The standard model is for now the most successful theory that has successfully explained and
integrated into a common framework all matter and three of the four fundamental forces. The
standard model can more accurately be called quantum field theory. This owes to the mathematical
structure of the theory. In QFT, all particles are considered as excitations of underlying quantized
fields. Therefore, just as quantization of the electromagnetic field leaves us with the photons, the
quantization of, say electron field, leaves us with the electrons. In this way we can build our theory
with a uniform field description. But let’s go back and start from the basics.

We have all been taught the basic structure of universe: protons, neutrons, electrons and the four
fundamental forces acting between them. Gravity and electromagnetic forces are the classical forces
that build up the classical physics. The new century opened up another, deeper and very new world
for us. Some phenomena like the atomic spectra, the photoelectric effect and black-body radiation
were successfully explained using the quantum theory of the atom and light. Then came the forces
of radioactive decay. Alpha, beta and gamma rays were studied and their nature and origin were
discovered. Alpha rays were nothing but Helium nuclei which broke off of a very heavy nucleus in
order for it to become stable. But this nucleus is in an excited state and in order to deexcite it
undergoes beta decay. It was discovered that beta rays are nothing but electrons that were formed
when neutron in a nucleus decayed into proton. The existence of a new particle, called the neutrino,
was proposed to explain the dynamics of beta decay. The force that causes beta type decays was
called the weak force. Gamma rays were highly penetrating electromagnetic radiations. Well, this
relatively consistent atomic theory was the result of the first phase of quantum revolution, as it is
called.

As this first phase was ending and the attention was concentrated on harnessing the nuclear
energies via the process of nuclear fission, Dirac was trying to explain the deeper peculiarities of the
atom. In this quest, he was seeking to combine relativity and quantum mechanics to give an
explanation for why spontaneous emission occurs. He theorized that even in complete vacuum,
there is momentary formation of particle-antiparticle pairs, which was called vacuum fluctuations.
Their lifetime is so short that we cannot detect the particles directly. But those particles do
‘stimulate’ the excited atom in their vicinity to emit a photon and come in deexcited state. This then
is the cause of spontaneous emission. His ideas also explained correctly the energy level of an
electron around the nucleus, also called the hyperfine structure of hydrogen. This consistent theory
of hydrogen atom was to be the base of the first quantum field theory, quantum electrodynamics
(QED).

Now, you might have a misconception that all quantum effects only exist on the quantum scale and
on the scale of our everyday perception, the classical effects dominate. But this is not a hard bound
rule. Let’s see why this is so. Matter particles have a dual nature, i.e., in some cases they behave as
particles and in other cases they behave as waves. Similarly, light has a dual nature, in some cases it
acts as particle and wave in other, that too at a macroscopic scale. We can draw a further
generalization in the form of statistics. Every fundamental particle and all atoms and molecules have
a property called spin, which can be considered as some kind of internal angular momentum. Now
this is a quantized and unique property of any particle. It can have either integral values or half-
integral values. Based on this the statistics of the particles are differentiated: the integral spin
particles are called bosons and follow Bose-Einstein statistics while the half-integral spin particles are
called fermions and follow Fermi-Dirac statistics. The fundamental difference between these two
types of statistics is that due to Pauli’s exclusion principle, the fermions cannot occupy the same
state while bosons have no such constraint. These characteristics causes the matter to behave as it
does in everyday life and also explains some exotic states of matter at macroscopic scales. If it were
not for the exclusion property, the atom would lose its stability and all matter would cave in on
itself. The phenomenon of lasers, superfluidity and superconductivity are explained on the basis of
bosonic property of different particles. In the case of lasers, the photons being bosons are all
brought into the same quantum state, i.e., same frequency, energy and same direction. This highly
coherent bunch of photons are what we observe coming out of a laser. Similarly, in the case of
superfluidity, the helium molecules behave as bosons and tend to occupy the same quantum state,
causing them to flow without ‘viscosity’. Similarly, in the case of superconductivity, pairs of electrons
in the material combine quantum mechanically to form bosonic quasi-particles called Cooper-pairs.
Just like bosons, these tend to occupy the same quantum states leading them to flow unhindered
through the lattice.

High energy particle colliders came into use in order to study substructure of protons and neutrons
themselves. Many newly observed nuclear reactions lead to discovery of many new types of
particles. Attempts were made to organize all known particles into categories according to their
physical particles. What resulted was the well-known table of particle physics. In total, all matter and
forces can be divided into two fundamental groups, fermions and bosons. Fermions include quarks
and leptons. There are three generations of both quarks and leptons. First generation of quarks
include up and down quarks. Second generation include charm and strange quarks. Similarly, the
third generation include top and bottom quarks. In the same way the first generation of leptons
include electron and electron neutrino, while the second gen includes muon and muon neutrino.
The third gen of leptons include tau and tau neutrino. The first gen of both groups is what forms the
majority of matter that we observe while the higher generations are observed only in high energy
experiments. Also, for every quark and lepton, there exists an anti-particle. Now, the quarks cannot
exist freely in nature. They either combine in a pair of three containing similar or different quarks,
else a quark and its antiquark form a particle. The former is called baryon and the latter, a meson.
These two are collectively called hadrons.

There are five bosons in total corresponding to three forces and one mass giving boson. The force
carrier of electromagnetic force is the ‘photon’ while that for strong force is the ‘gluon’. For the
weak force, we have two bosons, the ‘W’ and the ‘Z’ boson. The ‘Higg’s’ boson is related to the
mechanism by which all particles obtain their masses. This forms the complete standard model. The
success of this theory lies in the fact that it was used to calculate from first principle the anomalous
magnetic moment of electron. It had also predicted the existence of W and Z bosons, gluon, top
quark and charm quark. It had also predicted the existence of Higg’s boson which was recently
discovered in 2012 at the Large Hadron Collider. Despite so many correct predictions, the SM falls
short of being a complete theory as it cannot explain many phenomena such as expansion of
universe, dark matter and dark energy. Most important of all, it fails until yet to incorporate gravity
into its framework. These shortcomings are the reason that scientists are looking for physics beyond
the Standard Model. This is what drives the collective research at CERN whereby many students are
working besides professional scientists in interpreting results from the big data outputs.