Particle Physics and the Standard Model

Particle physics studies the smallest known constituents of matter and the forces that act between them. The Standard Model is our best current theory and has been tested to extraordinary precision.

The Building Blocks

• Quarks — up, down, charm, strange, top, bottom; they combine to form protons and neutrons.
• Leptons — electron, muon, tau and their neutrinos.
• Gauge bosons — photon (electromagnetism), gluon (strong), W and Z (weak).
• Higgs boson — gives elementary particles their mass.

How We Study Them

Particle accelerators such as the LHC collide beams at near-light-speed and study the debris with detectors that record billions of events per second. Modern analysis relies heavily on machine learning.