Elementary Particles Background Ordinary matter consists of neutrons, protons and electrons.

Neutrons carry no charge, protons are positively charged and electrons are negatively charged. For convenience, we will call the charge on proton as +e and that of electron be e. (e is just some number) The most basic model of atomic physics gives the simplest picture of how matter can exist. The picture is as follow, Protons and neutrons live in the nucleus and electrons spin around the nucleus. All these three members altogether constitute an atom. This picture works wonderfully well when we deal with most of the problems. We can explain much about properties of different elements, formation of bonds and even the hydrogen spectrum and photon emissions. (Just if we have to consider a little bit of quantum thinking the quantization of energy). Going deep into the nucleus When we do not go into the nucleus, life is so far so good. (Remember all chemistry does is just playing with the outside electrons!) However, when considering the atom, especially those heavy atoms (large atomic number Z), one immediate question will be: how can a nucleus possibly exist? The size of the nucleus is extremely small compared to an atom! Nucleus to atom is like an apple to the Earth. (No joking) In other words, the positively charged protons are so closely packed. Like charges repel. Then if there is only Coulomb force between protons, the nucleus cannot be there because protons will repel each other as much as they can. (Forget gravitational force, proton is so light in mass) For the nucleus be stable at all, we think there should be some constraint to lock the protons together. Therefore, we are forced to conclude that there exists a third kind of force, attractive in nature, which binds the protons together.

Elementary particles is a kind of physics resulted from the attempt to explain these third kind of force the strong force. You can see a brief comparison below, In Gravitational force, two objects attract each other due to the interaction between their masses. (Newtons Law of Gravitation) In E&M, two objects attract or repel each other due to interactions between + and charges. (Coulomb force Law) In atomic physics, strong forces exist due to the interaction between elementary particles. (Standard Model) The point that make this topic so difficult is that there so many elementary particles in Standard Model. So far, thats almost all about the story. Fundamental building blocks of matter leptons and quarks (hadrons) Most of these particles are found in radioactive decays or particle collider experiment. Individual leptons or quarks are not yet found. Matter is composed of leptons and quarks. Some of them have meaningful names (like neutrinos), but most of the particles in the so-called particle zoo are named just for fun! (Remark: quarks and hadrons are somehow difficult to separate because they are much about the same thing)

1. Leptons There are 3 generations of leptons; each generation has 2 flavors (types) I: Electron e, electron neutrino ve II: Muon , muon-nutrino v III: Tau (or Tauon) , tau-nutrion v

Properties of leptons Leptons () = particles that do not react with strong force. 1. response to gravitational force if their mass 0 2. response to EM force if their charge Q 0 3. do not response to strong (nuclear) force 4. Leptons are point particle: no structure down to 10-18 m. 5. There are totally 12 different leptons. (each particle has an anti-particle) 6. Only electrons appear in ordinary matter since it is the lightest (i.e., in lowest energy, E = mc2) Below are table for reference only Mass (MeV/c2) e 0.511 105.7 1777 half-life t1/2 stable 2.2s 3.0 ps

2. Quarks (Hadrons) Hadrons are combination of quarks; there are two kinds of hadrons (meaning two types of quark patterns)

Again, 3 generations of quarks, each generation has 2 flavor (types) Up u , down d Charm c, strange s Top t , bottom b Again, their names has no meaning at all, just for fun by physicists!

Properties of hadrons: Hadrons() = particles that can react with strong force. 1. Electric charge: Quarks have fractional electric charge but charge of hadrons = 0, 1, 2 2. Quark confinement: No free quarks can be isolated. Quarks in hadron are bound together by super-strong interaction via exchanging gluons (another kind of elementary particles, dont worry you dont need to know this in detail) 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.
.

Quarks are point particle: no structure down to 10-18 m. Hadrons response to gravitational force as their mass 0 response to EM force if their charge Q 0 Lightest meson: 0 (135 MeV/c2) Lightest baryon: p (938 MeV/c2) stable

Some simple example Proton = (u,u,d) = (up, up, down) Neutron = (u,d,d) = (up, down, down) That is to say, a proton consists of 2 up quarks and 1 down quark. Thus, from the above table, we can calculate the charge of a proton = 2/3 +2/3 + (-1/3) = +1, while similarly, charge of neutron = 2/3 + (-1/3) + (-1/3) = 0. We now see why proton is positively charged while neutron has zero charge!

Anti-particle For all particles, there exists an anti-particle that have same mass but opposite property to its original particle. For example, for electron, we have positron having same mass as electron but a +e charge