physics, mathematical physics, philosophy of physics
theory (physics), model (physics)
experiment, measurement, computable physics
Axiomatizations
Tools
Structural phenomena
Types of quantum field thories
fields and particles in particle physics
and in the standard model of particle physics:
matter field fermions (spinors, Dirac fields)
flavors of fundamental fermions in the standard model of particle physics: | |||
---|---|---|---|
generation of fermions | 1st generation | 2nd generation | 3d generation |
quarks () | |||
up-type | up quark () | charm quark () | top quark () |
down-type | down quark () | strange quark () | bottom quark () |
leptons | |||
charged | electron | muon | tauon |
neutral | electron neutrino | muon neutrino | tau neutrino |
bound states: | |||
mesons | light mesons: pion () ρ-meson () ω-meson () f1-meson a1-meson | strange-mesons: ϕ-meson (), kaon, K*-meson (, ) eta-meson () charmed heavy mesons: D-meson (, , ) J/ψ-meson () | bottom heavy mesons: B-meson () ϒ-meson () |
baryons | nucleons: proton neutron |
(also: antiparticles)
hadrons (bound states of the above quarks)
minimally extended supersymmetric standard model
bosinos:
dark matter candidates
Exotica
The standard model of particle physics is a model (in particle physics): a quantum field theory that describes the fundamental particles currently experimentally known, containing
as well as three of the four fundamental forces as currently known, which, somewhat roughly, are
It is defined as a local Lagrangian field theory which is an Einstein-Maxwell-Yang-Mills-Dirac-Higgs theory.
The main ingredient missing from the standard model is the quantum version of the field of gravity. For decades, a large part of theoretical physics has been absorbed with attempts to understand how this last of the known fundamental forces might fit into the picture.
As a quantum field theory, the standard model is in particular a Yang–Mills gauge theory with spinors in Yang–Mills theory.
Although there are several approaches to formulate a mathematically precise definition of what a quantum field theory is, there is no rigorous formulation (yet) that comprises the whole standard model.
The exact gauge group of the standard model is not quite the product group
of the circle group with special unitary groups, but is the quotient group
of that by a cyclic group which is the subgroup generated from an element of the form
where denotes an th primitive root of unity, i.e.
(See Baez-Huerta 09, p. 33-36 for a fairly comprehensive discussion; also e.g. HMY 13, p. 2.
This is in the sense that all known elementary particles in the standard model are invariant under this subgroup. In principle it could be that as yet undetected heavy particles break this invariance after all, cf. Li & Xu 2024.)
Strikingly, this exact gauge group (1) of the standard model of particle physics happens to coincide with…
…the group
of determinant-1 elements in the direct product group , which makes manifest that the standard model gauge group is a subgroup of the simple Lie group SU(5).
This is the basis of “grand unified theories” (GUT), speculative extensions of the standard model trying to understand its gauge group as being a spontaneously broken simple Lie group-symmetry.
…the subgroup of the Jordan algebra automorphism group of the octonionic Albert algebra that “stabilizes a 4d sub-Minkowski spacetime” (see there for details).
More concretely, it is identified with the subgroup of Spin(9) which respects a splitting (Krasnov 19, see also at SO(10)-GUT)
This is part of ongoing speculation that octonionic exceptional structures might be behind the standard model.
flavors of fundamental fermions in the standard model of particle physics: | |||
---|---|---|---|
generation of fermions | 1st generation | 2nd generation | 3d generation |
quarks () | |||
up-type | up quark () | charm quark () | top quark () |
down-type | down quark () | strange quark () | bottom quark () |
leptons | |||
charged | electron | muon | tauon |
neutral | electron neutrino | muon neutrino | tau neutrino |
bound states: | |||
mesons | light mesons: pion () ρ-meson () ω-meson () f1-meson a1-meson | strange-mesons: ϕ-meson (), kaon, K*-meson (, ) eta-meson () charmed heavy mesons: D-meson (, , ) J/ψ-meson () | bottom heavy mesons: B-meson () ϒ-meson () |
baryons | nucleons: proton neutron |
The standard model of particle physics is supported by a tremendous level of confirmation by experiment, lately by the LHC experiment. But there are indictations of discrepancies, pointing to “new physics”. See at
Not quite in tension with the standard model, but still possibly pointing to unaccounted effects is the
Then there are experimental phenomena which are known to be implied by the standard model by way of computer simulation (lattice QCD), but which are not conceptually understood:
Finally there is the evident and notorious fact that the standard model simply does not include any quantum field theory of the fourth known fundamental force, gravity. See at
for more on this.
There is a plethora of attempts and suggestions for variations and generalizations of the standard model into models that may resolve the tension with experiment mentioned above and which may be conceptually more satisfying from the point of view of models in theoretical physics.
Shortly after the conception of general relativity, it was observed by Kaluza and Klein that the force of gravity alone may effectively appear – if considered on a spacetime that is a bundle whose fiber has a tiny volume (as meaured by the Riemannian metric) – as the field of gravity coupled to gauge fields on the base of the bundle. For details on this see Kaluza-Klein mechanism.
The huge conceptual simplification that this observation suggested had excited theoreticians early on, but a problem of Kaluza–Klein models is that not only does the “compactified” theory of gravity as if by magic emulate gauge fields, but it also always contains further scalar fields that are not experimentally observed.
For that reason interest in Kaluza–Klein theories had decreased in the middle of the last century. Physics departments saw a major revival of the idea when string theory (see below) gained interest, since that theory necessarily exhibits a Kaluza–Klein mechanism. Incidentally, the problem of the spurious fields – the moduli – was still present in this approach. For more on this see the entry landscape of string theory vacua.
One of the oldest studies of variations of the standard model is the investigation of grand unified theories (GUTs), which are Yang–Mills theories that instead of the standard model gauge group have a bigger gauge group which is however a simple group.
A widespread perception is that some of the conceptual problems with the standard model point to the fact that some basic assumption of 20th century physics on the nature of reality is oversimplified. According to the approach of noncommutative geometry, modeling spacetime as a smooth manifold is an oversimplification that makes itself felt when the quantization of the force of gravity becomes relevant.
In a class of “noncommutative” generalizations of the standard model, spacetime is therefore replaced more generally by a spectral triple that models a possibly “noncommutative space”. One of the more successful approaches in this direction is the Connes-Lott-Chamseddine model. This effectively is a Kaluza-Klein theory (see above), but with the crucial difference that the fiber in the KK-picture is a highly non-classical non-commutative space, whose classical dimension is that of a point, but whose intrinsic dimension is 6. (This is incidentally the same value of the internal dimension as suggest by string theory.)
For more on this see
A more drastic theoretical modifications to the standard model is proposed in the context of string theory, where the entire concept of quantum field theory is proposed to be refined by something else. As opposed to GUTs, this approach at least suggests a way in which also the fourth remaining force field of gravity could be incorporated into the picture.
See
relevant experiments
anomalies
anomalous magnetic moment of the muonagnetic moment#Anomalies)
string theory FAQ – Did string theory provide any insight relevant in experimental particle physics?
standard model of particle physics and cosmology
theory: | Einstein- | Yang-Mills- | Dirac- | Higgs |
---|---|---|---|---|
gravity | electroweak and strong nuclear force | fermionic matter | scalar field | |
field content: | vielbein field | principal connection | spinor | scalar field |
Lagrangian: | scalar curvature density | field strength squared | Dirac operator component density | field strength squared + potential density |
Textbook accounts:
W. Noel Cottingham, ; Derek A. Greenwood, An introduction to the standard model of particle physics, Cambridge University Press 2012 (doi:10.1017/CBO9780511791406, ZMATH entry)
Paul Langacker, The Standard Model and Beyond, CRC Press 2009, 2012, second edition 2017 (spire:846915, publisher webpage, author webpage)
J D Vergados, The Standard Model and Beyond, World Scientific 2017 (doi:10.1142/10669)
Review and introduction:
Matthew Schwartz, Quantum Field Theory and the Standard Model, Cambridge University Press (2014) [ISBN:9781107034730, doi:10.1017/9781139540940, pdf]
Gerd Rudolph, Matthias Schmidt, Section 7.7 of: Differential Geometry and Mathematical Physics Part II. Fibre Bundles, Topology and Gauge Fields, Springer 2017 (doi:10.1007/978-94-024-0959-8)
Ben Gripaios, Lectures: From quantum mechanics to the Standard Model (arXiv:2005.06355)
Fernando Quevedo, Andreas Schachner: Cambridge Lectures on The Standard Model [arXiv:2409.09211]
Mathematical (representation theoretic) review with an eye towards grand unified theory:
Howard Georgi, Lie Algebras In Particle Physics, Westview Press (1999), CRC Press (2019) [doi:10.1201/9780429499210]
John Baez, John Huerta, The Algebra of Grand Unified Theories, Bull. Am. Math. Soc. 47:483-552, 2010 (arXiv:0904.1556)
and with an eye towards intersecting D-brane modelsL
and with emphasis of the effective field theories involved (chiral perturbation theory, Fermi’s theory):
More on the issue of the exact gauge group:
On subgroups of Clifford algebras reminiscent of gauge groups of relevance in the standard model of particle physics and grand unified theories thereof:
Robert A. Wilson, A group-theorist’s perspective on symmetry groups in physics (arXiv:2009.14613)
Robert A. Wilson, On the Problem of Choosing Subgroups of Clifford Algebras for Applications in Fundamental Physics, Adv. Appl. Clifford Algebras 31, 59 (2021) (doi:10.1007/s00006-021-01160-5)
See also:
Alain Connes, Matilde Marcolli, chapter I, section 12 of Noncommutative Geometry, Quantum Fields and Motives
Review with outlook “beyond the standard model”:
Paul Langacker, The standard model and beyond, talk at TPFNP 2005 (pdf, Langacker05.pdf)
Dmitry Kazakov, Beyond the Standard Model’ 17 (arXiv:1807.00148)
Andrea Wulzer, Behind the Standard Model (arXiv:1901.01017)
James Wells, The Once and Present Standard Model of Elementary Particle Physics (arxiv:1911.04604)
Discussion of anomaly cancellation on the standard model of particle physics:
Takaaki Hashimoto, Mamoru Matsunaga, Kenta Yamamoto, Quantization of hypercharge in gauge groups locally isomorphic but globally nonisomorphic to (arXiv:1302.0669)
Nakarin Lohitsiri, David Tong, Hypercharge Quantisation and Fermat’s Last Theorem (arXiv:1907.00514)
(relating to Fermat's last theorem)
The big international conference of 1974 in London was a turning point … Ellis’ catalog well reflected the state of theoretical confusion and general disarray in trying to interpret the data. But in the midst of all of this was a talk by John Iliopoulos (I think I was there too). With passionate zealotry, he laid out with great accuracy what we call the standard model. Everything was there: proton decay, charm, the GIM mechanism of course, QCD, the electroweak theory, grand unification, Higgs, etc. It was all presented with absolute conviction and sounded at the time just a little mad, at least to me (I am a conservative).
Tom Kibble, The Standard Model of Particle Physics (arXiv:1412.4094)
John Iliopoulos, The making of the standard theory, Adv.Ser.Direct.High Energy Phys. 26 (2016) 29-59 (spire:1497884, pdf)
Last revised on September 17, 2024 at 05:03:02. See the history of this page for a list of all contributions to it.