Chapter 10

The Standard Model of Particle Physics

The current version of the Standard Model of particle physics is based on only a few elementary particles: six quarks and six leptons, the gauge elds responsible for the interactions, and the still sought-after Higgs boson. The fundamental interactions relevant for particle physics are the electromagnetic, strong, and weak interactions. This chapter summarizes the properties of the elementary particles, the aspects shared by the fundamental interactions and where they differ, and the open questions left unanswered by the Standard Model.

10.1 Properties of the Elementary Particles

In Chaps. 5, 6 and 7 we discussed the three fundamental interactions (or forces): electromagnetism and the strong and weak interactions. In principle, gravity is a fourth fundamental interaction, however, it plays practically no role in particle physics and is neglected in the so-called Standard Model. We can divide the elementary particles into matter (the quarks and leptons with spin /2); bosons with spin , whose exchange generates the interactions (or forces), and the Higgs boson with spin zero. Up to now six quarks and six leptons have been discovered, see Chaps. 6 and 7. Table 10.1 summarizes their properties again (where the electric charge is given in multiples of e, and the light quark masses correspond to those in potential models); the properties of the bosons known nowadays are given in Table 10.2.

U. Ellwanger, From the Universe to the Elementary Particles, Undergraduate Lecture Notes in Physics, DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-24375-2_10, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2012

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Table 10.1 Masses, electric charges, and interactions of the known quarks and leptons Mass Quark u d s c b t Lepton e e 300 MeV/c2 300 MeV/c2 500 MeV/c2 1.4 GeV/c2 4.4 GeV/c2 173 GeV/c2 < 2 eV/c2 0.511 MeV/c2 <190 keV/c2 106 MeV/c2 <18 MeV/c2 1.78 GeV/c2 Charge +2/3 1/3 1/3 +2/3 1/3 +2/3 0 1 0 1 0 1 Strong Int. Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No No No No Weak Int. Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

Table 10.2 Masses, electric charges, and interactions of the known bosons Boson Photon () Gluon W Z Higgs Mass (GeV/c2 ) 0 0 80.4 91.2 114 Charge 0 0 1 0 0 Strong Int. No Yes No No No Weak Int. No No Yes Yes Yes

10.2 Properties of the Fundamental Interactions

The essential properties of the three interactions of particle physics are as follows: The electromagnetic interaction is generated by the exchange of massless photons, which carry no electric charge by themselves. The value of the electric ne structure constant 1/137 is relatively small, implying that the description of electromagnetic processes in quantum eld theory is relatively simple: in most cases it sufces to conne oneself to the simplest Feynman diagrams contributing to a given process. The strong interaction is generated by the exchange of massless gluons. The quantity corresponding to the electric charge is color, which is carried by quarks but not by leptons. Gluons themselves carry color, i.e., a strong charge, as well. The value of the strong ne structure constant is s 1, and accordingly we have to take into account all Feynman diagrams contributing to a given process. The most important consequence is that the dependence of the strong force on the distance between colored particles is very different from that for the electric force: at large distances, the strong force remains constant (and attractive), leading to the connement of

10.3 Open Questions

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quarks and gluons inside hadrons. Hadrons are either baryons, consisting of three quarks, or mesons, consisting of a quark and an antiquark. The weak interaction is generated by the exchange of W and Z0 bosons. These bosons are (very) massive, implying that this interaction is relatively weak. The explanation of these masses necessitates the introduction of the Higgs eld, the non-vanishing constant value of which everywhere generates an effective mass for every particle coupling to the Higgs boson. The masses of all elementary particlesincluding quarks and leptonsare generated this way. To date (September 2011), the existence of the Higgs boson has not been conrmed, and its mass is still unknown. What are the fundamental (not calculable) parameters of the standard model? First, these are the three ne structure constants of the electromagnetic, strong, and weak interactions. To these we have to add the six quark masses or, alternatively, the six corresponding Yukawa couplings (see (7.20)). Since the three different quark families (7.1) can transform into each other during processes of the weak interaction (see Fig. 7.2), they are rotated into each other (similarly to the neutrinos in (7.26) treatedsimpliedin Sect. 7.5), which leads to three real and one imaginary mixing angle or elements of the CabibboKobayashiMaskawa matrix. (The imaginary mixing angle, implied by a complex mass parameter or Yukawa coupling, respectively, allows a description of CP violation, mentioned in Sect. 7.4.) Thus the quark masses and mixing angles alone lead to 10 additional parameters. First of all, the masses of the three charged leptons correspond to three more parameters. However, the phenomenon of neutrino oscillations indicates that the complete lepton sector involves at least 10 parameters as wellpossibly even more. Finally, the expression (7.16) for the potential energy of the Higgs eld contains two additional parameters: 2 and 2 H . Adding gravity to the fundamental interactions gives two more parameters: Newtons constant G and the cosmological constant .

10.3 Open Questions

The Standard Model dened in terms of the particles in Tables 10.1 and 10.2 and the three fundamental interactions describes successfully a very large number of processes; it is not in conict with any of the numerous results of measurements. However, several questions remain open: (a) Why are there three families of quarks and leptons with nearly identical properties? They differ only in their masses, i.e., (Yukawa) couplings to the Higgs eld; why are these couplings so different? What is the origin of the mixing angles? (b) What is the structure of the neutrino mass terms (see Sect. 7.5)? Do right-handed neutrinos exist?

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(c) Why are there three interactions and what is the origin of the values of their couplings, i.e., ne structure constants? (A possible answer to this question is the theory of Grand Unication considered in Sect. 12.1.) (d) If we take quantum corrections in quantum eld theory into account, a numerical conict related to the parameter in (7.16) for the potential energy of the Higgs eld appears. This numerical conict is similar to the problem of the cosmological constant mentioned at the end of Sect. 7.3 and will be discussed in Sect. 12.2 together with a possible solution (supersymmetry). (e) If we describe gravity in quantum eld theory, quantum corrections lead to innite results (see Sect. 12.3). A possible solution of this fundamental conict between quantum eld theory and the theory of general relativity is string theory.