Particle Physics

PPSC Physics Preparations

Elementary Particles
• In particle physics, an elementary particle or fundamental particle is
a subatomic particle with no substructure, i.e. it is not composed of
other particles. Particles currently thought to be elementary include
the fundamental fermions (quarks, leptons, antiquarks,
and antileptons), which generally are "matter particles" and
"antimatter particles", as well as the fundamental bosons (gauge
bosons and the Higgs boson), which generally are "force particles"
that mediate interactions among fermions. A particle containing two
or more elementary particles is called a composite particle.
Elementary Particles
Fundamental Forces
• Strong Force
• It is the strongest fundamental force that is responsible for the
binding of protons and neutrons inside the nucleus.
• It is a short range force of the order of 10-15m
• The carrier particle or mediating particle for this force is gluon
Electromagnetic Force
• Responsible for binding of atoms and molecules
• It has a relative strength of 10-2
• It is a long range force
• Mediating particle is photon
• its range is infinity.
Weak Force
• Responsible for radioactive decays e.g beta decay
• It has a relative strength of 10-13
• Short range nuclear force (10-18)
• Mediating particles are W and Z Bosons
Gravitational Force
• Weakest of all the fundamental force
• It has a relative strength of 10-43 m
• It is a long range force
• It obeys inverse square law
• Mediating particle is graviton
Classification of Particles
There are two main classes of particles according to their interaction
1. Hadrons
• They interact through the strong force
• There are two types of hadrons, baryons and mesons
• The particles that having mass less than a proton are known as
mesons
• All mesons decay finally into leptons and photons
• They are bosons
Classification
Mesons
Baryons
• Their mass is equal to or greater than proton
• They are fermions
• All baryons decay finally into a proton
Baryons
Leptons
• Lepton is a Greek world for light
• They participate in weak interactions
• All leptons are fermions
Baryon Number
• Whenever a nuclear reaction or decay occurs, the sum of baryon
numbers before and after the reaction remains conserve.
p+n p+p+n+anti-p
According to this law a proton is stable and cannot decay into mesons
etc but GUT stated that a proton is not stable, so baryon number is not
always conserved
Lepton Number
• Whenever a nuclear reaction or decay occurs, the sum of lepton
numbers before and after the reaction remains conserve.
• A lepton is assigned a +1 and anti lepton is assigned -1
n p + e + anti-nutrino
Strangeness
• These particles always produced in pairs
• They are produced by the strong interactions but decay onto particles
that interact through weak interactions
• Strangeness number is assigned +1 to a strange particle and -1 to the
second particle in the pair
• All other particles have a strangeness of 0
• Strangeness number is not always conserved
Quarks
• All the hadrons have internal structure that is consists of elemenetary
particles named quarks
• Quark model was suggested by Murry Gell Mann and G. zweig in 1963
• The word quark was borrowed from James Joyce famous poem
• There are two quark models
1. Original model
2. Modified model
The original Model
• According to this model there were only three quarks named up,
down and strange.
Properties
• Recent experiments revealed that there are more quarks and also anti
quarks as given below
Colored Quarks
• Certain particles have quarks composition in such a way that they did
not follow the exclusion principle e.g.
1. ꭥ- (sss)
All these quarks have parallel spins and hence there spins are added
To avoid this in 1965 MOO-Yong Han introduce the concept of color
which is similar to electric charge.
There are three colors of quarks
Red ,green and blue
Quantum Chromodynamics
• The theory how quarks interact with each other.
• Strong interactions are mediated by gluons.
• Gluons have eight colors.
• Quarks also interacts through gluons.
• Every time a gluon is absorbed the color of quark changes
• Therefore strong force is also called color force
Yukawa Theory
• Strong force is mediated by non elementary particles called mesons
between proton and neutron was suggested by Yukawa
Mesons are also known as Yukawa particle
Standard Model
• Combination of QCD and electroweak theory is called standard model