standard model is a modern theory of the structure and interactions of elementary particles, repeatedly verified experimentally. This theory is based on a very small number of postulates and allows you to theoretically predict the properties of thousands of different processes in the world of elementary particles. In the overwhelming majority of cases, these predictions are confirmed by experiment, sometimes with exceptionally high accuracy, and those rare cases when the predictions of the Standard Model disagree with experience become the subject of heated debate.

The Standard Model is the boundary that separates the reliably known from the hypothetical in the world of elementary particles. Despite its impressive success in describing experiments, the Standard Model cannot be considered the ultimate theory of elementary particles. Physicists are sure that it must be part of some deeper theory of the structure of the microworld. What kind of theory this is is not yet known for certain. Theorists have developed big number candidates for such a theory, but only an experiment should show which of them corresponds to the real situation that has developed in our Universe. That is why physicists are persistently looking for any deviations from the Standard Model, any particles, forces or effects that are not predicted by the Standard Model. Scientists collectively call all these phenomena "New physics"; exactly Search new physics and constitutes the main task of the Large Hadron Collider.

Main Components of the Standard Model

The working tool of the Standard Model is quantum field theory - a theory that replaces quantum mechanics at speeds close to the speed of light. The key objects in it are not particles, as in classical mechanics, and not "particle-waves", as in quantum mechanics, but quantum fields: electronic, muon, electromagnetic, quark, etc. - one for each variety of "entities of the microworld".

Both vacuum, and what we perceive as separate particles, and more complex formations that cannot be reduced to separate particles - all this is described as different states of fields. When physicists use the word "particle", they actually mean these states of the fields, and not individual point objects.

The standard model includes the following main ingredients:

• A set of fundamental "bricks" of matter - six kinds of leptons and six kinds of quarks. All of these particles are spin 1/2 fermions and very naturally organize themselves into three generations. Numerous hadrons - compound particles involved in the strong interaction - are composed of quarks in various combinations.
• Three types of forces acting between fundamental fermions - electromagnetic, weak and strong. Weak and electromagnetic interactions are two sides of the same electroweak interaction. The strong force stands apart, and it is this force that binds quarks into hadrons.
• All these forces are described on the basis of gauge principle- they are not introduced into the theory “forcibly”, but seem to arise by themselves as a result of the requirement that the theory be symmetrical with respect to certain transformations. Separate types of symmetry give rise to strong and electroweak interactions.
• Despite the fact that there is an electroweak symmetry in the theory itself, in our world it is spontaneously violated. Spontaneous breaking of electroweak symmetry- a necessary element of the theory, and in the framework of the Standard Model, the violation occurs due to the Higgs mechanism.
• Numerical values ​​for about two dozen constants: these are the masses of the fundamental fermions, numerical values coupling constants of interactions that characterize their strength, and some other quantities. All of them are extracted once and for all from comparison with experience and are no longer adjusted in further calculations.

In addition, the Standard Model is a renormalizable theory, that is, all these elements are introduced into it in such a self-consistent way that, in principle, allows calculations to be carried out with the required degree of accuracy. However, often calculations with the desired degree of accuracy turn out to be unbearably complex, but this is not a problem of the theory itself, but rather of our computational abilities.

What the Standard Model Can and Cannot Do

The Standard Model is, in many ways, a descriptive theory. It does not give answers to many questions that begin with “why”: why are there so many particles and exactly these? where did these interactions come from and exactly with such properties? Why did nature need to create three generations of fermions? Why are the numerical values ​​of the parameters exactly the same? In addition, the Standard Model is unable to describe some of the phenomena observed in nature. In particular, it has no place for neutrino masses and dark matter particles. The Standard Model does not account for gravity, and it is not known what happens to this theory on the Planck energy scale, when gravity becomes extremely important.

If, however, the Standard Model is used for its intended purpose, for predicting the results of collisions of elementary particles, then it allows, depending on the specific process, to perform calculations with varying degrees accuracy.

• For electromagnetic phenomena(electron scattering, energy levels) accuracy can reach parts per million or even better. The record here is held by the anomalous magnetic moment of the electron, which is calculated with an accuracy better than one billionth.
• Many high-energy processes that proceed due to electroweak interactions are calculated with an accuracy better than a percent.
• Worst of all is the strong interaction at not too high energies. The accuracy of calculating such processes varies greatly: in some cases it can reach percent, in other cases it is different. theoretical approaches may give answers that differ by several times.

It is worth emphasizing that the fact that some processes are difficult to calculate with the required accuracy does not mean that the “theory is bad”. It's just that it's very complicated, and the current mathematical techniques are not yet enough to trace all its consequences. In particular, one of the famous mathematical Millennium Problems concerns the problem of confinement in quantum theory with non-Abelian gauge interaction.

Additional literature:

• Basic information about the Higgs mechanism can be found in the book by L. B. Okun "Physics of elementary particles" (at the level of words and pictures) and "Leptons and quarks" (at a serious but accessible level).

On fig. 11.1 we have listed all known particles. These are the building blocks of the universe, at least that's the point of view at the time of this writing, but we expect to discover a few more - perhaps we will see the Higgs boson or a new particle associated with the mysterious dark matter that exists in abundance, which is probably necessary for descriptions of the entire universe. Or, perhaps, we are expecting supersymmetric particles predicted by string theory, or Kaluza-Klein excitations, characteristic of extra dimensions of space, or tech quarks, or lepto quarks, or ... theoretical arguments are many, and it is the responsibility of those who conduct experiments at the LHC to to narrow the search field, rule out incorrect theories, and point the way forward.

Rice. 11.1. Particles of nature

Everything that can be seen and touched; any inanimate machine, any creature, any rock, any person on planet Earth, any planet and any star in each of the 350 billion galaxies in the observable universe is made up of particles from the first column. You yourself are made up of a combination of just three particles - up and down quarks and an electron. Quarks make up the atomic nucleus, and electrons, as we have seen, are responsible for chemical processes. The remaining particle from the first column, the neutrino, may be less familiar to you, but the Sun pierces every square centimeter of your body with 60 billion of these particles every second. They mostly pass through you and the whole Earth without delay - that's why you never noticed them and did not feel their presence. But they, as we will see shortly, play a key role in the processes that provide the energy of the Sun, and therefore make our very life possible.

These four particles form the so-called first generation of matter - together with the four fundamental natural interactions, this is all that, apparently, is needed to create the universe. However, for reasons that are not yet fully understood, nature chose to provide us with two more generations - clones of the first, only these particles are more massive. They are presented in the second and third columns of Fig. 11.1. The top quark, in particular, is superior in mass to other fundamental particles. It was discovered on an accelerator at the National Accelerator Laboratory. Enrico Fermi near Chicago in 1995 and measured to be over 180 times the mass of a proton. Why the top quark turned out to be such a monster, given that it is as similar to a dot as an electron, is still a mystery. Although all these extra generations of matter do not play a direct role in the normal affairs of the universe, they were probably key players immediately after the Big Bang ... But that's a different story.

On fig. 11.1, the right column also shows interaction carrier particles. Gravity is not shown in the table. An attempt to transfer the calculations of the Standard Model to the theory of gravity encounters certain difficulties. The absence in the quantum theory of gravity of some important properties characteristic of the Standard Model does not allow the same methods to be applied there. We do not claim that it does not exist at all; string theory is an attempt to take gravity into account, but so far the success of this attempt has been limited. Since gravity is very weak, it does not play a significant role in particle physics experiments, and for this very pragmatic reason, we won't talk about it anymore. In the last chapter, we established that the photon serves as an intermediary in the propagation of electromagnetic interaction between electrically charged particles, and this behavior is determined by the new scattering rule. Particles W and Z do the same for the weak force, and gluons carry the strong force. The main differences between quantum descriptions of forces are due to the fact that the scattering rules are different. Yes, everything is (almost) that simple, and we have shown some of the new scattering rules in Fig. 11.2. The similarity with quantum electrodynamics makes it easy to understand the functioning of the strong and weak interactions; we only need to understand what the scattering rules are for them, after which we can draw the same Feynman diagrams that we gave for quantum electrodynamics in the last chapter. Fortunately, changing the scattering rules is very important for the physical world.

Rice. 11.2. Some scattering rules for strong and weak interactions

If we were writing a textbook on quantum physics, we could proceed to the derivation of the scattering rules for each of those shown in Fig. 11.2 processes, and for many others. These rules are known as Feynman's rules, and they would later help you—or a computer program—calculate the probability of this or that process, as we did in the chapter on quantum electrodynamics.

These rules reflect something very important about our world, and it is very fortunate that they can be reduced to a set of simple pictures and positions. But we're not actually writing a textbook on quantum physics, so instead let's focus on the diagram at the top right: this is scattering rule especially important for life on earth. It shows how an up quark goes into a down quark, emitting W-particle, and this behavior leads to grandiose results in the core of the Sun.

The sun is a gaseous sea of ​​protons, neutrons, electrons and photons with a volume of a million earth globes. This sea collapses under its own gravity. An incredible compression heats the solar core to 15,000,000 ℃, and at this temperature, protons begin to fuse to form helium nuclei. This releases energy that increases the pressure on the outer layers of the star, balancing the internal force of gravity.

We'll explore this precarious equilibrium distance in more detail in the epilogue, but for now we just want to understand what "protons start to merge with each other" means. It seems simple enough, but the exact mechanism of such a merger in the solar core was a source of constant scientific debate in the 1920s and 1930s. British scientist Arthur Eddington was the first to suggest that the Sun's energy source was nuclear fusion, but it was quickly discovered that the temperature seemed to be too low to start this process in accordance with the laws of physics known at that time. However, Eddington held his own. His remark is well known: “The helium we are dealing with must have been formed at some time in some place. We do not argue with the critic that the stars are not hot enough for this process; we suggest that he find a warmer place.”

The problem is that when two fast-moving protons in the sun's core approach each other, they repel through electromagnetic interaction (or, in the language of quantum electrodynamics, through the exchange of photons). To merge, they need to converge to almost complete overlap, and the solar protons, as Eddington and his colleagues were well aware, are not moving fast enough (because the Sun is not hot enough) to overcome the mutual electromagnetic repulsion. The rebus is resolved as follows: comes to the fore W-particle and saves the situation. In a collision, one of the protons can turn into a neutron, turning one of its up quarks into a down quark, as indicated in the illustration of the scattering rule in Fig. 11.2. Now the newly formed neutron and the remaining proton can come together very closely, since the neutron does not carry any electrical charge. In the language of quantum field theory, this means that the exchange of photons, in which the neutron and proton would repel each other, does not occur. Freed from electromagnetic repulsion, the proton and neutron can fuse together (through the strong interaction) to form a deuteron, which quickly leads to the formation of helium, which releases the energy that gives life to a star. This process is shown in Fig. 11.3 and reflects the fact that W-particle does not live long, decaying into a positron and a neutrino - this is the source of the very neutrinos that fly through your body in such quantities. Eddington's militant defense of fusion as a source of solar energy was justified, although he had no ready solution. W-a particle explaining what is happening was discovered at CERN with Z- particle in the 1980s.

Rice. 11.3. The transformation of a proton into a neutron in the framework of the weak interaction with the emission of a positron and a neutrino. Without this process, the Sun could not shine

To conclude our brief review of the Standard Model, let us turn to the strong force. The scattering rules are such that only quarks can go into gluons. Moreover, they are more likely to do just that than anything else. The propensity to emit gluons is precisely the reason why the strong force got its name and why the scattering of gluons is able to overcome the electromagnetic repulsive force that would cause a positively charged proton to destroy itself. Fortunately, the strong nuclear force only extends over a short distance. Gluons cover a distance of no more than 1 femtometer (10–15 m) and decay again. The reason why the influence of gluons is so limited, especially when compared to photons that can travel through the entire universe, is that gluons can turn into other gluons, as shown in the last two diagrams of Fig. 11.2. This trick on the part of gluons essentially distinguishes the strong interaction from the electromagnetic one and limits the field of its activity to the contents of the atomic nucleus. Photons don't have this kind of self-transition, which is good, because otherwise you wouldn't be able to see what's going on in front of you, because the photons flying towards you would be repelled by those moving along your line of sight. The fact that we can see at all is one of the wonders of nature, which also serves as a stark reminder that photons rarely interact at all.

We have not explained where all these new rules come from, nor why the Universe contains such a set of particles. And there are reasons for that: in fact, we do not know the answer to any of these questions. The particles that make up our universe - electrons, neutrinos and quarks - are the main actors in the cosmic drama unfolding before our eyes, but so far we have no convincing ways to explain why the cast should be that way.

However, it is true that given a list of particles, we can partially predict the way they interact with each other, prescribed by the rules of scattering. Physicists did not pick up the scattering rules out of thin air: in all cases they are predicted on the basis that the theory describing the interactions of particles must be a quantum field theory with some addition called gauge invariance.

A discussion of the origin of the scattering rules would take us too far from the main direction of the book - but we still want to reiterate that the basic laws are very simple: The universe is made up of particles that move and interact according to a set of transition and scattering rules. We can use these rules when calculating the probability that "something" going on, adding up rows of clock faces, with each clock face corresponding to every way that "something" may happen .

Origin of mass

By stating that particles can both jump from point to point and scatter, we enter the realm of quantum field theory. Transition and dissipation is practically all she does. However, we have not mentioned the mass so far, because we decided to leave the most interesting for last.

Modern particle physics is called upon to answer the question of the origin of mass and gives it with the help of a beautiful and amazing branch of physics associated with a new particle. Moreover, it is new not only in the sense that we have not yet met it on the pages of this book, but also because in fact no one on Earth has yet met it “face to face”. This particle is called the Higgs boson, and the LHC is close to finding it. By September 2011, when we are writing this book, a curious object similar to the Higgs boson was observed at the LHC, but so far not enough events have occurred to decide whether it is or not. Perhaps these were only interesting signals that, upon further examination, disappeared. The question of the origin of mass is especially remarkable in that the answer to it is valuable beyond our obvious desire to know what mass is. Let us try to explain this rather mysterious and strangely constructed sentence in more detail.

When we talked about photons and electrons in quantum electrodynamics, we introduced a transition rule for each of them and noted that these rules are different: for an electron associated with the transition from a point BUT exactly AT we used the symbol P(A, B), and for the corresponding rule associated with a photon, the symbol L(A, B). It is time to consider how much the rules differ in these two cases. The difference is, for example, that electrons are divided into two types (as we know, they “spin” in one of two different ways), and photons are divided into three, but this distinction will not interest us now. We will pay attention to something else: the electron has mass, but the photon does not. This is what we will explore.

On fig. 11.4 shows one of the options, how we can represent the propagation of a particle with mass. The particle in the figure jumps from a point BUT exactly AT over several stages. She goes from the point BUT to point 1, from point 1 to point 2, and so on, until finally it gets from point 6 to point AT. It is interesting, however, that in this form the rule for each jump is the rule for a particle with zero mass, but with one important caveat: each time the particle changes direction, we must apply a new rule for decreasing the clock, and the amount of decrease is inversely proportional to the mass described particles. This means that at each change of clock, the clocks associated with heavy particles decrease less sharply than the clocks associated with lighter particles. It is important to emphasize that this rule is systemic.

Rice. 11.4. Massive particle moving from a point BUT exactly AT

Both the zigzag and the shrinking of the clock follow directly from Feynman's rules for the propagation of a massive particle without any other assumptions. On fig. 11.4 shows only one way for a particle to hit from a point BUT exactly AT– after six rotations and six reductions. To get the final clock face associated with a massive particle passing from a point BUT exactly AT, we must, as always, add up an infinite number of clock faces associated with all the possible ways in which the particle can make its zigzag path from the point BUT exactly AT. The easiest way is a straight path without any turns, but you will also have to take into account routes with a huge number of turns.

For zero-mass particles, the reduction factor associated with each rotation is deadly because it is infinite. In other words, after the first turn, we reduce the dial to zero. Thus, for particles without mass, only the direct route matters - other trajectories simply do not correspond to any clock face. This is exactly what we expected: for particles without mass, we can use the jump rule. However, for particles with non-zero mass, turns are allowed, although if the particle is very light, then the reduction factor imposes a severe veto on trajectories with many turns.

Thus, the most likely routes contain few turns. Conversely, heavy particles do not face too much reduction factor when turning, so they are more often described by zigzag paths. Therefore, we can assume that heavy particles can be considered as massless particles that move from a point BUT exactly AT zigzag. The number of zigzags is what we call "mass".

This is all great because now we have a new way of representing massive particles. On fig. 11.5 shows the propagation of three different particles with increasing mass from a point BUT exactly AT. In all cases, the rule associated with each "zigzag" of their path is the same as the rule for a particle without mass, and for each turn you have to pay with a decrease in the clock face. But don't get too excited: we haven't explained anything fundamental yet. All that has been done so far is to replace the word "mass" with the words "tendency for zigzags." This could be done because both options are mathematically equivalent descriptions of the propagation of a massive particle. But even with such limitations, our conclusions seem interesting, and now we learn that this, it turns out, is not just a mathematical curiosity.

Rice. 11.5. Particles with increasing mass move from a point BUT exactly AT. The more massive the particle, the more zigzags in its motion

Fast forward to the realm of the speculative - although by the time you read this book, the theory may already be confirmed.

At the moment, collisions of protons with a total energy of 7 TeV are taking place at the LHC. TeV is teraelectronvolts, which corresponds to the energy that an electron would have if passed through a potential difference of 7,000,000 million volts. For comparison, note that this is approximately the energy that subatomic particles had a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang, and this energy is enough to create a mass directly from the air, equivalent to the mass of 7000 protons (in accordance with Einstein's formula E=mc²). And this is only half of the calculated energy: if necessary, the LHC can turn on even higher speeds.

One of the main reasons why 85 countries around the world have joined forces to create and manage this gigantic audacious experiment is the desire to find the mechanism responsible for creating the mass of fundamental particles. The most common idea of ​​the origin of mass is in its connection with zigzags and establishes a new fundamental particle, which other particles "bump" into in their movement through the Universe. This particle is the Higgs boson. According to the Standard Model, without the Higgs boson, fundamental particles would jump from place to place without any zigzags, and the universe would be very different. But if we fill the empty space with Higgs particles, they can deflect particles, causing them to zigzag, which, as we have already established, leads to the appearance of "mass". It's kind of like walking through a crowded bar: you're pushed from left to right, and you practically zigzag your way to the counter.

The Higgs mechanism takes its name from the Edinburgh theorist Peter Higgs; this concept was introduced into particle physics in 1964. The idea was obviously in the air, because it was expressed at the same time by several people at once: firstly, of course, Higgs himself, as well as Robert Braut and Francois Engler, who worked in Brussels, and Londoners Gerald Guralnik, Carl Hagan and Tom Kibble. Their work, in turn, was based on the earlier work of many predecessors, including Werner Heisenberg, Yoichiro Nambu, Geoffrey Goldstone, Philip Anderson, and Steven Weinberg. Full understanding of this idea, for which in 1979 Sheldon Glashow, Abdus Salam and Weinberg received Nobel Prize, is nothing but the Standard Model of particle physics. The idea itself is quite simple: an empty space is not actually empty, which leads to zigzag movement and the appearance of mass. But we obviously still have a lot to explain. How did it turn out that the empty space suddenly became filled with Higgs particles - wouldn't we have noticed this sooner? And how did this strange state of things even come about? The proposal does indeed seem rather extravagant. In addition, we have not explained why some particles (for example, photons) have no mass, while others ( W bosons and top quarks) have a mass comparable to that of an atom of silver or gold.

The second question is easier to answer than the first, at least at first glance. Particles interact with each other only according to the scattering rule; Higgs particles are no different in this regard. The scattering rule for a top quark implies the likelihood of it merging with a Higgs particle, and the corresponding decrease in the clock face (remember that under all scattering rules there is a decreasing factor) will be much less significant than in the case of lighter quarks. That's "why" the top quark is so much more massive than the top quark. However, this, of course, does not explain why the scattering rule is just that. AT modern science The answer to this question is discouraging: "Because." This question is similar to others: “Why exactly three generations of particles?” and “Why is gravity so weak?” Similarly, there is no scattering rule for photons that would allow them to pair with Higgs particles, and as a result, they do not interact with them. This, in turn, leads to the fact that they do not zigzag and have no mass. Although we can say that we have relieved ourselves of responsibility, this is still at least some explanation. And it's certainly safe to say that if the LHC can help detect Higgs bosons and confirm that they do indeed pair with other particles in this way, then we can safely say that we have found an amazing way to peep into how nature works.

The first of our questions is somewhat more difficult to answer. Recall that we were interested: how did it happen that empty space was filled with Higgs particles? To warm up, let's say this: quantum physics says that there is no such thing as empty space. What we call so is a seething whirlpool of subatomic particles, from which there is no way to get rid of. With that in mind, we're much more comfortable with the idea that empty space could be full of Higgs particles. But first things first.

Imagine a small piece of interstellar space, a lonely corner of the universe millions of light-years from the nearest galaxy. Over time, it turns out that particles constantly appear out of nowhere and disappear into nowhere. Why? The fact is that the rules allow the process of creation and annihilation of an antiparticle-particle. An example can be found in the bottom diagram of Fig. 10.5: imagine that it has nothing on it but an electronic loop. Now the diagram corresponds to the sudden appearance and subsequent disappearance of an electron-positron pair. Since the drawing of the loop does not violate any of the rules of quantum electrodynamics, we must recognize that this is a real possibility: remember, anything that can happen, happens. This particular opportunity is just one of an infinite number options for the wild life of empty space, and since we live in a quantum universe, it is correct to sum up all these probabilities. In other words, the structure of the vacuum is incredibly rich and consists of all the possible ways in which particles appear and disappear.

In the last paragraph, we mentioned that the vacuum is not so empty, but the picture of its existence looks quite democratic: all elementary particles play their roles. What makes the Higgs boson so special? If the vacuum were just a seething breeding ground for the creation and annihilation of antimatter-matter pairs, then all elementary particles would continue to have zero mass: quantum loops themselves do not generate mass. No, you need to populate the vacuum with something else, and that's where a whole truckload of Higgs particles come into play. Peter Higgs simply made the assumption that empty space is full of particles, without feeling compelled to go into deep explanations as to why this is so. Higgs particles in a vacuum create a zigzag mechanism, and constantly, without rest, interact with every massive particle in the universe, selectively slowing down their movement and creating mass. The overall result of the interactions between ordinary matter and a vacuum filled with Higgs particles is that the world from formless becomes diverse and magnificent, inhabited by stars, galaxies and people.

Of course, a new question arises: where did the Higgs bosons even come from? The answer is still unknown, but it is believed that these are the remnants of the so-called phase transition, which occurred shortly after the Big Bang. If you stare at a window pane long enough on a winter evening when it gets colder, you will see the structured perfection of ice crystals emerge as if by magic from the water vapor of the night air. The transition from water vapor to ice on cold glass is a phase transition as the water molecules reform into ice crystals; this is a spontaneous breaking of the symmetry of a shapeless vapor cloud due to a decrease in temperature. Ice crystals form because it is energetically favorable. As a ball rolls down a mountain to reach a lower energy state below, as electrons rearrange themselves around atomic nuclei to form the bonds that hold molecules together, so the chiseled beauty of a snowflake is a lower-energy configuration of water molecules than a formless cloud of vapor.

We believe that something similar happened at the beginning of the history of the universe. The newborn Universe was initially hot particles of gas, then expanded and cooled, and it turned out that the vacuum without Higgs bosons turned out to be energetically unfavorable, and the vacuum state full of Higgs particles became natural. This process, in fact, is similar to the condensation of water into drops or ice on cold glass. The spontaneous formation of water droplets as they condense on cold glass gives the impression that they simply formed "out of nowhere". So it is with the Higgs bosons: in the hot stages immediately after the Big Bang, the vacuum seethed with fleeting quantum fluctuations (represented by loops in our Feynman diagrams): particles and antiparticles appeared out of nowhere and disappeared again into nowhere. But then, as the universe cooled, something drastic happened: suddenly, out of nowhere, like a drop of water on glass, there was a “condensate” of Higgs particles, which were initially held together by interaction, combined into a short-lived suspension through which other particles propagated.

The idea that the vacuum is filled with material suggests that we, like everything else in the universe, live inside a giant condensate that was created when the universe cooled, as morning dew does at dawn. Lest we think that the vacuum has acquired content only as a result of the condensation of Higgs bosons, we point out that there are not only them in the vacuum. As the Universe cooled further, quarks and gluons also condensed, and it turned out, not surprisingly, quark and gluon condensates. The existence of these two is well established experimentally, and they play a very important role in our understanding of the strong nuclear force. In fact, it was due to this condensation that most of the mass of protons and neutrons appeared. The Higgs vacuum, therefore, ultimately created the masses of elementary particles that we observe - quarks, electrons, tau, W- and Z-particles. Quark condensate comes into play when it comes to explaining what happens when many quarks combine to form a proton or neutron. Interestingly, while the Higgs mechanism is of relatively little value in explaining the masses of protons, neutrons, and heavy atomic nuclei, for explaining the masses W- and Z-particles it is very important. For them, quark and gluon condensates in the absence of the Higgs particle would create a mass of about 1 GeV, but the experimentally obtained masses of these particles are about 100 times higher. LHC was designed to operate in the energy zone W- and Z-particles to find out which mechanism is responsible for their relatively large mass. What kind of mechanism it is - the long-awaited Higgs boson or something that no one could have thought of - only time and particle collisions will show.

Let's dilute the reasoning with some amazing numbers: the energy contained in 1 m3 of empty space as a result of the condensation of quarks and gluons is an incredible 1035 joules, and the energy resulting from the condensation of Higgs particles is another 100 times more. Together they equal the amount of energy that our Sun produces in 1000 years. More precisely, it is a "negative" energy because the vacuum is in a lower energy state than the universe, which does not contain any particles. Negative energy is the binding energy that accompanies the formation of condensates and is by no means mysterious in itself. It is no more surprising than the fact that it takes energy to boil water (and reverse the phase transition from vapor to liquid).

But there is still a mystery: such a high negative energy density of each square meter of empty space should actually bring such devastation to the Universe that neither stars nor people would appear. The universe would literally fly apart moments after the Big Bang. This is what would happen if we took the predictions of vacuum condensation from particle physics and directly added them to Einstein's gravitational equations, applying them to the entire universe. This nasty puzzle is known as the cosmological constant problem. Actually, this is one of the central problems of fundamental physics. She reminds us that one must be very careful when claiming a complete understanding of the nature of vacuum and/or gravity. Until we understand something very fundamental.

On this sentence, we end the story, because we have reached the boundaries of our knowledge. The zone of the known is not what the research scientist works with. Quantum theory, as we noted at the beginning of the book, has a reputation for being complicated and frankly strange, because it allows almost any behavior of material particles. But all that we have described, with the exception of this last chapter, is known and well understood. Following not common sense, and evidence, we came to a theory that can describe great amount phenomena - from rays emitted by hot atoms to nuclear fusion in stars. Practical use This theory led to the most important technological breakthrough of the 20th century - the advent of the transistor, and the operation of this device would be completely incomprehensible without a quantum approach to the world.

But quantum theory is much more than just a triumph of explanation. As a result of the forced marriage between quantum theory and relativity, antimatter appeared as a theoretical necessity, which was actually discovered after that. Spin, the fundamental property of subatomic particles that underlies the stability of atoms, was also originally a theoretical prediction that was required for the stability of the theory. And now, in the second quantum century, the Large Hadron Collider is heading into the unknown to explore the vacuum itself. That's what it is scientific progress: the constant and careful creation of a set of explanations and predictions that ultimately changes our lives. This is what distinguishes science from everything else. Science is not just a different point of view, it reflects a reality that would be difficult to imagine even with the most twisted and surreal imagination. Science is the study of reality, and if reality is surreal, then it is. Quantum theory is the best example of the power of the scientific method. No one could have come up with it without the most careful and detailed experiments possible, and the theoretical physicists who created it were able to set aside their deep-seated comfortable ideas about the world in order to explain the evidence before them. Perhaps the mystery of vacuum energy is a call to a new quantum journey; perhaps the LHC will provide new and inexplicable data; perhaps everything contained in this book will turn out to be only an approximation to a much deeper picture - an amazing journey to understanding our quantum universe continues.

When we were just thinking about this book, we argued for a while how to finish it. I wanted to find a reflection of the intellectual and practical power of quantum theory, which would convince even the most skeptical reader that science really reflects what is happening in the world in every detail. We both agreed that such a reflection exists, although it requires some understanding of algebra. We have tried our best to reason without carefully considering the equations, but there is no way to avoid this here, so we at least give a warning. So our book ends here, even if you wish you had more. In the epilogue - the most convincing, in our opinion, demonstration of the power of quantum theory. Good luck - and have a good trip.

Epilogue: Death of the Stars

As they die, many stars end up as superdense balls of nuclear matter entwined with many electrons. These are the so-called white dwarfs. This will be the fate of our Sun when it runs out of nuclear fuel in about 5 billion years, and the fate of even more than 95% of the stars in our Galaxy. Using only a pen, paper, and a bit of your head, you can calculate the largest possible mass of such stars. These calculations, first undertaken in 1930 by Subramanyan Chandrasekhar, using quantum theory and relativity, made two clear predictions. First, it was a prediction of the very existence of white dwarfs - balls of matter, which, according to the Pauli principle, are saved from destruction by the force of their own gravity. Secondly, if we look away from a piece of paper with all sorts of theoretical scribbles and look into the night sky, we never we will not see a white dwarf with a mass that would be more than 1.4 times the mass of our Sun. Both of these assumptions are incredibly bold.

Today, astronomers have already cataloged about 10,000 white dwarfs. Most of them have a mass of approximately 0.6 solar masses, and the largest recorded is a little less 1.4 solar masses. This number, 1.4, is evidence of the triumph of the scientific method. It relies on an understanding of nuclear physics, quantum physics and Einstein's special theory of relativity - three pillars of 20th century physics. Its calculation also requires the fundamental constants of nature, which we have already encountered in this book. By the end of the epilogue, we will find out that the maximum mass is determined by the ratio

Look carefully at what we have written: the result depends on Planck's constant, speed of light, Newton's gravitational constant and proton mass. It's amazing that we can predict the largest mass of a dying star using a combination of fundamental constants. The tripartite combination of gravity, relativity and quantum of action appearing in the equation ( hc/G)½, is called the Planck mass, and when substituting the numbers, it turns out that it is equal to about 55 μg, that is, the mass of a grain of sand. Therefore, oddly enough, the Chandrasekhar limit is calculated using two masses - a grain of sand and a proton. From such negligible quantities, a new fundamental unit of the mass of the Universe is formed - the mass of a dying star. We can go on at length to explain how the Chandrasekhar limit is obtained, but instead we will go a little further: we will describe the actual calculations, because they are the most intriguing part of the process. We won't get an exact result (1.4 solar masses), but we will get close to it and see how professional physicists make deep conclusions through a sequence of carefully considered logical moves, constantly referring to well-known physical principles. At no time will you have to take our word for it. Keeping a cool head, we will slowly and inexorably approach quite astonishing conclusions.

Let's start with the question: what is a star? It can be said almost without error that visible universe is made up of hydrogen and helium, the two most simple elements formed in the first few minutes after the Big Bang. After about half a billion years of expansion, the universe has become cold enough that denser regions in gas clouds begin to clump together under their own gravity. These were the first rudiments of galaxies, and inside them, around the smaller "lumps", the first stars began to form.

The gas in these prototype stars got hotter as they collapsed, as anyone with a bicycle pump knows: gas heats up when compressed. When the gas reaches a temperature of around 100,000℃, the electrons can no longer be held in orbits around hydrogen and helium nuclei, and the atoms decay to form a hot plasma composed of nuclei and electrons. The hot gas tries to expand, resisting further collapse, but with enough mass, gravity takes over.

Since protons have a positive electrical charge, they will repel each other. But the gravitational collapse is gaining momentum, the temperature continues to rise, and the protons begin to move faster and faster. Over time, at a temperature of several million degrees, the protons will move as fast as possible and approach each other so that the weak nuclear force prevails. When this happens, the two protons can react with each other: one of them spontaneously becomes a neutron, simultaneously emitting a positron and a neutrino (exactly as shown in Fig. 11.3). Freed from the force of electrical repulsion, the proton and neutron merge as a result of a strong nuclear interaction, forming a deuteron. This releases a huge amount of energy, because, as with the formation of a hydrogen molecule, binding something together releases energy.

A single proton fusion releases very little energy by everyday standards. One million pairs of protons fuse together to produce an energy equal to the kinetic energy of a mosquito in flight, or the energy of a 100-watt light bulb in a nanosecond. But on an atomic scale, this is a gigantic amount; also, remember that we are talking about the dense core of a collapsing gas cloud, in which the number of protons per 1 cm³ reaches 1026. If all the protons in a cubic centimeter merge into deuterons, 10¹³ joules of energy will be released - enough to meet the annual needs of a small city.

The fusion of two protons into a deuteron is the beginning of the most unbridled fusion. This deuteron itself seeks to fuse with a third proton, forming a lighter isotope of helium (helium-3) and emitting a photon, and these helium nuclei then pair up and fuse into ordinary helium (helium-4) with the emission of two protons. At each stage of synthesis, more and more energy is released. In addition, the positron, which appeared at the very beginning of the chain of transformations, also quickly merges with an electron in the surrounding plasma, forming a pair of photons. All this released energy is channeled into a hot gas of photons, electrons and nuclei, which resists the compression of matter and stops the gravitational collapse. Such is the star: nuclear fusion burns the nuclear fuel inside, creating an external pressure that stabilizes the star, preventing gravitational collapse from occurring.

Of course, once the hydrogen fuel runs out, because its quantity is finite. If the energy is no longer released, the external pressure stops, gravity comes into its own again, and the star resumes its delayed collapse. If a star is massive enough, its core can warm up to about 100,000,000℃. At this stage, helium - a by-product of burning hydrogen - ignites and begins its fusion, forming carbon and oxygen, and the gravitational collapse again stops.

But what happens if the star is not massive enough to start helium fusion? With stars that are less than half the mass of our Sun, something very surprising happens. As the star contracts, it heats up, but even before the core reaches 100,000,000℃, something stops the collapse. That something is the pressure of electrons that respect the Pauli principle. As we already know, the Pauli principle is vital to understanding how atoms remain stable. It underlies the properties of matter. And here is another advantage of it: it explains the existence of compact stars that continue to exist, although they have already worked out all the nuclear fuel. How does it work?

When a star contracts, the electrons inside it begin to occupy a smaller volume. We can represent the electron of a star through its momentum p, thereby associating it with the de Broglie wavelength, h/p. Recall that a particle can only be described by a wave packet that is at least as large as the wavelength associated with it. This means that if the star is sufficiently dense, then the electrons must overlap each other, that is, they cannot be considered to be described by isolated wave packets. This, in turn, means that the effects of quantum mechanics, in particular the Pauli principle, are important for describing electrons. The electrons condense until two electrons start to pretend to occupy the same position, and the Pauli principle says that electrons cannot do this. Thus, and in dying star electrons avoid each other, which helps to get rid of further gravitational collapse.

Such is the fate of lighter stars. And what will happen to the Sun and other stars of similar mass? We left them a couple of paragraphs ago when we burned helium into carbon and hydrogen. What happens when the helium also runs out? They, too, will have to begin to shrink under the action of their own gravity, that is, the electrons will be condensed. And the Pauli principle, as with lighter stars, will eventually step in and stop the collapse. But for the most massive stars, even the Pauli principle is not omnipotent. As the star contracts and the electrons condense, the core heats up and the electrons start moving faster and faster. In sufficiently heavy stars, electrons approach the speed of light, after which something new happens. When the electrons start moving at such a speed, the pressure that the electrons are able to develop to resist gravity decreases, and they are no longer able to solve this problem. They simply can no longer fight gravity and stop the collapse. Our task in this chapter is to calculate when this will happen, and we have already covered the most interesting. If the mass of the star is 1.4 times or more greater than the mass of the Sun, the electrons are defeated, and gravity wins.

Thus ends the review which will serve as the basis of our calculations. Now we can move on, forgetting about nuclear fusion, because burning stars lie outside the scope of our interests. We will try to understand what is happening inside the dead stars. We will try to understand how the quantum pressure of condensed electrons balances the force of gravity and how this pressure decreases if the electrons move too fast. Thus, the essence of our research is the confrontation between gravity and quantum pressure.

Although all this is not so important for subsequent calculations, we cannot leave everything on our own. interesting place. When a massive star collapses, it is left with two scenarios. If it is not too heavy, then it will continue to compress protons and electrons until they are synthesized into neutrons. Thus, one proton and one electron spontaneously transform into a neutron with the emission of a neutrino, again due to the weak nuclear force. In a similar way, the star inexorably turns into a small neutron ball. According to Russian physicist Lev Landau, the star becomes "one giant core." Landau wrote this in his 1932 paper On the Theory of Stars, which appeared in print the same month that James Chadwick discovered the neutron. It would probably be too bold to say that Landau predicted the existence of neutron stars, but he certainly foresaw something similar, and with great foresight. Perhaps the priority should be given to Walter Baade and Fritz Zwicky, who wrote in 1933: “We have every reason to believe that supernovae represent a transition from ordinary stars to neutron stars, which at the final stages of existence consist of extremely densely packed neutrons.

This idea seemed so ridiculous that it was parodied in the Los Angeles Times (see Figure 12.1), and neutron stars remained a theoretical curiosity until the mid-1960s.

In 1965, Anthony Hewish and Samuel Okoye found "evidence of an unusual source of high-temperature radio brightness in the Crab Nebula", although they were unable to identify the source as a neutron star. Identification happened in 1967 thanks to Iosif Shklovsky, and soon, after more detailed research, thanks to Jocelyn Bell and the same Hewish. The first example of one of the most exotic objects in the universe is called the Hewish pulsar - Okoye. Interestingly, the same supernova that gave rise to the Hewish-Okoye pulsar was seen by astronomers 1000 years earlier. The Great Supernova of 1054, the brightest in recorded history, was observed by Chinese astronomers and, as is known from the famous rock art, by the inhabitants of Chaco Canyon in the southwestern United States.

We haven't yet talked about how these neutrons manage to resist gravity and prevent further collapse, but perhaps you yourself can guess why this happens. Neutrons (like electrons) are slaves of the Pauli principle. They, too, can stop the collapse, and neutron stars, like white dwarfs, are one of the options for the end of a star's life. neutron stars, actually, a digression from our story, but we cannot help but note that these are very special objects in our magnificent Universe: they are city-sized stars, so dense that a teaspoon of their substance weighs like an earthly mountain, and they do not decay only due to the natural "hostility" of particles of the same spin to each other.

For the most massive stars in the universe, there is only one possibility. In these stars, even neutrons move at a speed close to the speed of light. Such stars are in for a catastrophe, because neutrons are not able to create enough pressure to resist gravity. Until the physical mechanism is known that prevents the core of a star, which has a mass about three times that of the Sun, from falling on itself, and the result is a black hole: a place where all the laws of physics known to us are canceled. It is assumed that the laws of nature still continue to operate, but to fully understand the inner workings of a black hole requires a quantum theory of gravity, which does not yet exist.

However, it is time to get back to the heart of the matter and focus on our dual purpose of proving the existence of white dwarfs and calculating the Chandrasekhar limit. We know what to do: it is necessary to balance the gravity and the pressure of the electrons. Such calculations cannot be done in the mind, so it is worth charting a plan of action. So here's the plan; it's quite long because we want to clarify some minor details first and set the stage for the actual calculations.

Step 1: we must determine what is the pressure inside the star, exerted by highly compressed electrons. You might be wondering why we don't pay attention to other particles inside a star: what about nuclei and photons? Photons do not obey the Pauli principle, so over time they will leave the star anyway. In the fight against gravity, they are not helpers. As for nuclei, nuclei with half-integer spin obey the Pauli principle, but (as we will see) because they have more mass, they exert less pressure than electrons, and their contribution to the fight against gravity can be safely ignored. This greatly simplifies the task: all we need is the electron pressure. Let's calm down on that.

Step 2: having calculated the pressure of electrons, we must deal with questions of equilibrium. It may not be clear what to do next. It is one thing to say that "gravity pushes, and electrons resist this pressure", it is quite another to operate with numbers. The pressure inside the star will vary: it will be greater in the center, and less on the surface. The presence of pressure drops is very important. Imagine a cube of stellar matter, which is located somewhere inside the star, as shown in Fig. 12.2. Gravity will push the cube towards the center of the star, and we have to figure out how the electron pressure will counter this. The pressure of the electrons in the gas acts on each of the six faces of the cube, and this effect will be equal to the pressure on the face times the area of ​​that face. This statement is accurate. Before we used the word "pressure", assuming that we have a sufficient intuitive understanding that the gas at high pressure"presses" more than at low. Actually, this is known to anyone who has ever pumped up a blown car tire with a pump.

Rice. 12.2. A small cube somewhere in the middle of the star. The arrows show the force acting on the cube from the electrons in the star

Since we need to properly understand the nature of pressure, let's make a brief foray into more familiar territory. Let's take the example of a tire. A physicist would say that the tire has deflated because there is not enough internal air pressure to support the weight of the car without deforming the tire, which is why we physicists are valued. We can go beyond this and calculate what the tire pressure should be for a car with a mass of 1500 kg, if 5 cm of the tire must constantly maintain contact with the surface, as shown in Fig. 12.3: again it's time for the board, chalk and rag.

If the tire is 20 cm wide and the road contact length is 5 cm, then the surface area of ​​the tire in direct contact with the ground will be 20 × 5 = 100 cm³. We don’t know the required tire pressure yet - we need to calculate it, so let’s denote it with the symbol R. We also need to know the force exerted on the road by the air in the tire. It is equal to the pressure times the area of ​​the tire in contact with the road, i.e. P× 100 cm². We have to multiply this by 4 more since the car is known to have four tires: P× 400 cm². This is the total force of the air in the tires acting on the road surface. Imagine it like this: the air molecule inside the tire is thrashed on the ground (to be very precise, they are thrashing on the rubber of the tire that is in contact with the ground, but this is not so important).

The Earth usually does not collapse, that is, it reacts with an equal but opposite force (hooray, we finally needed Newton's third law). The car is lifted by the earth and lowered by gravity, and since it does not fall into the ground and soar into the air, we understand that these two forces must balance each other. Thus, we can assume that the power P× 400 cm² is balanced by the down force of gravity. This force is equal to the weight of the car, and we know how to calculate it using Newton's second law. F=ma, where a- acceleration of free fall on the surface of the Earth, which is equal to 9.81 m / s². So, the weight is 1500 kg × 9.8 m/s² = 14,700 N (newtons: 1 newton is approximately 1 kg m/s², which is approximately equal to the weight of an apple). Since the two forces are equal, then

P × 400 cm² = 14,700 N.

Solving this equation is easy: P\u003d (14 700 / 400) N / cm² \u003d 36.75 N / cm². A pressure of 36.75 H/cm² is perhaps not a very familiar way of expressing tire pressure, but it can easily be converted to more familiar "bars".

Rice. 12.3. The tire deforms slightly under the weight of the vehicle.

One bar is the standard air pressure, which is equal to 101,000 N per m². There are 10,000 cm² in 1 m², so 101,000 N per m² is 10.1 N per cm². So our desired tire pressure is 36.75 / 10.1 = 3.6 bar (or 52 psi - you can figure that out yourself). Using our equation, we can also understand that if the tire pressure drops by 50% to 1.8 bar, then we double the area of ​​the tire in contact with the road surface, i.e. the tire deflates a little. With this refreshing digression into calculating pressure, we are ready to return to the cube of stellar matter shown in Fig. 12.2.

If the bottom face of the cube is closer to the center of the star, then the pressure on it should be slightly greater than the pressure on the top face. This pressure difference generates a force acting on the cube, which tends to push it away from the center of the star (“up” in the figure), which is what we want to achieve, because the cube is at the same time being pushed by gravity towards the center of the star (“down” in the figure) . If we could understand how to combine these two forces, we would improve our understanding of the star. But that's easier said than done because although step 1 allows us to understand what is the pressure of the electrons on the cube, it is still necessary to calculate how much gravity pressure is in the opposite direction. By the way, there is no need to take into account the pressure on the side faces of the cube, because they are equidistant from the center of the star, so the pressure on the left side will balance the pressure on the right side, and the cube will not move either to the right or to the left.

To find out how much force gravity acts on the cube, we must return to Newton's law of attraction, which says that each piece of stellar matter acts on our cube with a force that decreases with increasing distance, that is, more distant pieces of matter press less than close ones. . It seems that the fact that the gravitational pressure on our cube is different for different pieces of stellar matter depending on their distance is a difficult problem, but we will see how to get around this point, at least in principle: we cut the star into pieces and then we calculate the force that each such piece exerts on our cube. Luckily, there's no need to introduce the star's culinary cut because a great workaround can be used. Gauss' law (named after the legendary German mathematician Karl Gauss) states that: a) one can completely ignore the attraction of all pieces that are farther from the center of the star than our cube; b) the total gravitational pressure of all the pieces closer to the center is exactly equal to the pressure that these pieces would exert if they were exactly in the center of the star. Using Gauss's law and Newton's law of attraction, we can conclude that a force is applied to the cube that pushes it towards the center of the star, and that this force is equal to

where Min is the mass of the star inside the sphere, the radius of which is equal to the distance from the center to the cube, Mcube is the mass of the cube, and r is the distance from the cube to the center of the star ( G is Newton's constant). For example, if the cube is on the surface of a star, then Min is the total mass of the star. For all other locations Min will be less.

We have had some success because to balance the effects on the cube (recall, this means that the cube is not moving and the star is not exploding or collapsing) requires that

where Pbottom and Ptop are the pressure of gas electrons on the lower and upper faces of the cube, respectively, and BUT is the area of ​​each side of the cube (remember that the force exerted by pressure is equal to the pressure times the area). We marked this equation with the number (1) because it is very important and we will return to it later.

Step 3: make yourself some tea and enjoy yourself, because by making step 1, we calculated the pressures Pbottom and Ptop, and then step 2 it became clear how to balance the forces. However, the main work is still ahead, because we need to finish step 1 and determine the pressure difference appearing on the left side of equation (1). This will be our next task.

Imagine a star filled with electrons and other particles. How are these electrons scattered? Let's pay attention to the "typical" electron. We know that electrons obey the Pauli principle, that is, two electrons cannot be in the same region of space. What does this mean for that sea of ​​electrons we call "gas electrons" in our star? Since it is obvious that the electrons are separated from each other, it can be assumed that each is in its own miniature imaginary cube inside the star. Actually, this is not entirely true, because we know that electrons are divided into two types - “with spin up” and “with spin down”, and the Pauli principle prohibits only too close arrangement of identical particles, that is, theoretically, they can be in a cube and two electrons. This contrasts with the situation that would arise if the electrons did not obey the Pauli principle. In this case, they would not sit two by two inside the "virtual containers". They would spread and enjoy a much larger living space. In fact, if it were possible to ignore various ways interactions of electrons with each other and with other particles in the star, there would be no limit to their living space. We know what happens when we constrain a quantum particle: it jumps according to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, and the more it is constrained, the more it jumps. This means that as our white dwarf collapses, the electrons become more and more confined and more and more excited. It is the pressure caused by their excitation that stops the gravitational collapse.

We can go even further because we can apply Heisenberg's uncertainty principle to calculate the typical momentum of an electron. For example, if we confine an electron to a region of size Δx, it will jump with typical momentum p ~ h / Δx. In fact, as we discussed in Chapter 4, momentum will approach the upper limit, and typical momentum will be anything from zero to that value; remember this information, we will need it later. Knowing momentum allows you to immediately know two more things. First, if the electrons do not obey the Pauli principle, then they will be limited to a region of no size Δx, but much larger. This, in turn, means much less vibration, and the less vibration, the less pressure. So obviously the Pauli principle comes into play; it presses on the electrons so much that, in accordance with the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, they exhibit excessive vibrations. After a while, we will transform the idea of ​​excess fluctuations into a pressure formula, but first we will find out what will be the “second”. Since the momentum p=mv, then the rate of oscillation is also inversely related to mass, so the electrons jump back and forth much faster than the heavier nuclei that are also part of the star. That is why the pressure of atomic nuclei is negligible.

So how can one, knowing the momentum of an electron, calculate the pressure exerted by a gas made up of these electrons? First you need to find out what size the blocks containing pairs of electrons should be. Our small blocks have volume ( Δx)³, and since we have to fit all the electrons inside the star, this can be expressed as the number of electrons inside the star ( N) divided by the volume of the star ( V). To fit all the electrons, you need exactly N/ 2 containers, because each container can hold two electrons. This means that each container will occupy a volume V divided by N/ 2, i.e. 2( V/N). We repeatedly need the quantity N/V(the number of electrons per unit volume inside the star), so let's give it its own symbol n. Now we can write down what the volume of the containers should be in order to fit all the electrons in the star, that is ( Δx)³ = 2 / n. Extracting the cube root from the right side of the equation makes it possible to deduce that

Now we can relate this to our expression derived from the uncertainty principle and calculate the typical momentum of the electrons according to their quantum oscillations:

p~ h(n/ 2)⅓, (2)

where the ~ sign means "about equal". Of course, the equation cannot be exact, because there is no way all electrons can oscillate in the same way: some will move faster than the typical value, others slower. The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle cannot tell exactly how many electrons are moving at one speed and how many at another. It makes it possible to make a more approximate statement: for example, if you compress the region of an electron, then it will oscillate with a momentum approximately equal to h / Δx. We will take this typical momentum and set it to be the same for all electrons. Thus, we will lose a little in the accuracy of calculations, but we will gain significantly in simplicity, and the physics of the phenomenon will definitely remain the same.

Now we know the speed of the electrons, which gives enough information to determine the pressure they exert on our cube. To see this, imagine a whole fleet of electrons moving in the same direction at the same speed ( v) towards the direct mirror. They hit the mirror and bounce off, moving at the same speed, but this time in the opposite direction. Let's calculate the force with which the electrons act on the mirror. After that, you can move on to more realistic calculations for cases where the electrons move in different directions. This methodology is very common in physics: you should first think about a simpler version of the problem you want to solve. Thus, you can understand the physics of the phenomenon with less problems and gain confidence to solve a more serious problem.

Imagine that the fleet of electrons consists of n particles per m³ and for simplicity has a circular area of ​​1 m², as shown in fig. 12.4. In a second n.v. electrons will hit the mirror (if v measured in meters per second).

Rice. 12.4. A fleet of electrons (small dots) moving in the same direction. All the electrons in a tube of this size will hit the mirror every second.

“We wonder why a group of talented and dedicated people would dedicate their lives to chasing objects so tiny that they can't even be seen? In fact, in the classes of particle physicists, human curiosity and a desire to find out how the world in which we live works is manifested. ” Sean Carroll

If you are still afraid of the phrase quantum mechanics and still do not know what the standard model is - welcome to cat. In my publication, I will try to explain the basics of the quantum world, as well as elementary particle physics, as simply and clearly as possible. We will try to figure out what are the main differences between fermions and bosons, why quarks have such strange names, and finally, why everyone was so eager to find the Higgs Boson.

What are we made of?

Well, we will begin our journey into the microcosm with a simple question: what do the objects around us consist of? Our world, like a house, consists of many small bricks, which, when combined in a special way, create something new, not only in appearance, but also in terms of its properties. In fact, if you look closely at them, you can find that there are not so many different types of blocks, it’s just that each time they connect to each other in different ways, forming new forms and phenomena. Each block is an indivisible elementary particle, which will be discussed in my story.

For example, let's take some substance, let it be the second element periodic system Mendeleev, inert gas, helium. Like other substances in the universe, helium is made up of molecules, which in turn are formed by bonds between atoms. But in this case, for us, helium is a little bit special because it's just one atom.

What is an atom made of?

The helium atom, in turn, consists of two neutrons and two protons, which make up the atomic nucleus, around which two electrons revolve. The most interesting thing is that the only absolutely indivisible here is electron.

An interesting moment of the quantum world

How smaller the mass of an elementary particle, the more she takes up space. It is for this reason that electrons, which are 2000 times lighter than a proton, take up much more space than the nucleus of an atom.

Neutrons and protons belong to the group of so-called hadrons(particles subject to strong interaction), and to be even more precise, baryons.

Hadrons can be divided into groups

• Baryons, which are made up of three quarks
• Mesons, which consist of a pair: particle-antiparticle

The neutron, as its name implies, is neutrally charged, and can be divided into two down quarks and one up quark. The proton, a positively charged particle, is divided into one down quark and two up quarks.

Yes, yes, I'm not kidding, they are really called upper and lower. It would seem that if we discovered the top and bottom quarks, and even the electron, we would be able to describe the entire Universe with their help. But this statement would be very far from the truth.

The main problem is that the particles must somehow interact with each other. If the world consisted only of this trinity (neutron, proton and electron), then the particles would simply fly through the vast expanses of space and would never gather into larger formations, like hadrons.

Fermions and Bosons

Quite a long time ago, scientists invented a convenient and concise form of representation of elementary particles, called the standard model. It turns out that all elementary particles are divided into fermions, of which all matter is composed, and bosons, which carry various kinds of interactions between fermions.

The difference between these groups is very clear. The fact is that according to the laws of the quantum world, fermions need some space to survive, while their counterparts, bosons, can easily live right on top of each other in trillions.

Fermions

A group of fermions, as already mentioned, creates visible matter around us. Whatever we see, wherever, is created by fermions. Fermions are divided into quarks, which interact strongly with each other and are trapped inside more complex particles like hadrons, and leptons, which freely exist in space independently of their counterparts.

Quarks are divided into two groups.

• Top type. Up quarks, with a charge of +23, include: up, charm and true quarks
• Lower type. Down-type quarks, with a charge of -13, include: down, strange and charm quarks

True and lovely are the largest quarks, while up and down are the smallest. Why quarks were given such unusual names, and more correctly, "flavors", is still a subject of controversy for scientists.

Leptons are also divided into two groups.

• The first group, with a charge of "-1", includes: an electron, a muon (heavier particle) and a tau particle (the most massive)
• The second group, with a neutral charge, contains: electron neutrino, muon neutrino and tau neutrino

Neutrino is a small particle of matter, which is almost impossible to detect. Its charge is always 0.

The question arises whether physicists will find several more generations of particles that will be even more massive than the previous ones. It is difficult to answer it, but theorists believe that the generations of leptons and quarks are limited to three.

Don't find any similarities? Both quarks and leptons are divided into two groups, which differ from each other in charge per unit? But more on that later...

Bosons

Without them, fermions would fly around the universe in a continuous stream. But exchanging bosons, fermions tell each other some kind of interaction. The bosons themselves do not interact with each other.

The interaction transmitted by bosons is:

• electromagnetic, particles - photons. These massless particles transmit light.
• strong nuclear, particles are gluons. With their help, quarks from the nucleus of an atom do not decay into separate particles.
• Weak nuclear, particles - W and Z bosons. With their help, fermions are transferred by mass, energy, and can turn into each other.
• gravitational , particles - gravitons. An extremely weak force on the scale of the microcosm. Becomes visible only on supermassive bodies.

A reservation about gravitational interaction.
The existence of gravitons has not yet been experimentally confirmed. They exist only in the form of a theoretical version. In the standard model, in most cases, they are not considered.

That's all, the standard model is assembled.

Trouble has just begun

Despite the very beautiful representation of the particles in the diagram, two questions remain. Where do particles get their mass and what is Higgs boson, which stands out from the rest of the bosons.

In order to understand the idea of ​​using the Higgs boson, we need to turn to quantum field theory. talking plain language, it can be argued that the whole world, the whole Universe, does not consist of the smallest particles, but of many different fields: gluon, quark, electronic, electromagnetic, etc. In all these fields, slight fluctuations constantly occur. But we perceive the strongest of them as elementary particles. Yes, and this thesis is highly controversial. From the point of view of corpuscular-wave dualism, the same object of the microcosm in different situations behaves like a wave, sometimes like an elementary particle, it depends only on how it is more convenient for a physicist observing the process to model the situation.

Higgs field

It turns out that there is a so-called Higgs field, the average of which does not want to go to zero. As a result, this field tries to take some constant non-zero value throughout the Universe. The field makes up the ubiquitous and constant background, as a result of which the Higgs Boson appears as a result of strong fluctuations.
And it is thanks to the Higgs field that particles are endowed with mass.
The mass of an elementary particle depends on how strongly it interacts with the Higgs field constantly flying inside it.
And it is because of the Higgs boson, and more specifically because of its field, that the standard model has so many similar groups of particles. The Higgs field forced the creation of many additional particles, such as neutrinos.

Results

What I have been told is the most superficial understanding of the nature of the Standard Model and why we need the Higgs Boson. Some scientists still hope in their hearts that a particle found in 2012 that looks like the Higgs boson at the LHC was just a statistical error. After all, the Higgs field breaks many of the beautiful symmetries of nature, making the calculations of physicists more confusing.
Some even believe that the standard model is living its life. last years because of its imperfection. But this has not been experimentally proven, and the standard model of elementary particles remains a valid example of the genius of human thought.

It makes no sense to keep doing the same thing and expect different results.

Albert Einstein

Standard Model (Elementary Particles)(English) Standard model of elementary particles) - a theoretical construction that does not correspond to nature, describing one of the components of electromagnetic interactions artificially separated into electromagnetic interaction, imaginary weak and hypothetical strong interactions of all elementary particles. The Standard Model does not include gravity.

First, a small digression. The field theory of elementary particles, acting within the framework of SCIENCE, relies on a foundation proven by PHYSICS:

• classical electrodynamics,
• quantum mechanics,
• Conservation laws are the fundamental laws of physics.

This is the fundamental difference between the scientific approach used by the field theory of elementary particles - a true theory must strictly operate within the laws of nature: this is what SCIENCE is all about.

Using elementary particles that do not exist in nature, inventing fundamental interactions that do not exist in nature, or replacing the interactions that exist in nature with fabulous ones, ignoring the laws of nature, doing mathematical manipulations on them (creating the appearance of science) - this is the lot of FAIRY TALES masquerading as science. As a result, physics slipped into the world of mathematical fairy tales. Fairy quarks with fabulous gluons, fabulous gravitons and fairy tales of the "Quantum Theory" (given off as reality) have already found their way into physics textbooks - shall we deceive children? Proponents of an honest New Physics tried to resist this, but the forces were not equal. And so it was until 2010 before the advent of the field theory of elementary particles, when the struggle for the revival of PHYSICS-SCIENCE moved to the level of open confrontation between a genuine scientific theory and mathematical fairy tales that seized power in the physics of the microworld (and not only).

The picture is taken from the world's Wikipedia

Originally, the quark model of hadrons was proposed independently in 1964 by Gellmann and Zweig and was limited to only three hypothetical quarks and their antiparticles. This made it possible to correctly describe the spectrum of elementary particles known at that time, without taking into account leptons, which did not fit into the proposed model and therefore were recognized as elementary, along with quarks. The price for this was the introduction of fractional electric charges that do not exist in nature. Then, with the development of physics and the receipt of new experimental data, the quark model gradually grew, transformed, adapting to new experimental data, eventually turning into the Standard Model. - It is interesting that four years later, in 1968, I started working on an idea that in 2010 gave humanity the Field Theory of Elementary Particles, and in 2015 - The Theory of Gravity of Elementary Particles, sending many mathematical tales of physics of the second half to the archive of the history of the development of physics twentieth century, including this one.

1 Basic provisions of the Standard Model of elementary particles
2 Standard model and fundamental interactions
3 Standard model and gauge bosons
4 Standard model and gluons
5 Standard model and the law of conservation of energy
6 Standard model and electromagnetism
7 Standard Model and field theory of elementary particles
8 Particles in physics through the eyes of the world's Wikipedia at the beginning of 2017
9 Standard model and fitting to reality
10 Physics of the 21st century: The Standard Model - summary

1 Basic provisions of the Standard Model of elementary particles

It is assumed that all matter consists of 12 fundamental fermion particles: 6 leptons (electron, muon, tau lepton, electron neutrino, muon neutrino and tau neutrino) and 6 quarks (u, d, s, c, b, t) .

It is stated that quarks participate in strong, weak and electromagnetic (with the understanding of quantum theory) interactions; charged leptons (electron, muon, tau-lepton) - in the weak and electromagnetic; neutrino - only in weak interaction.

It is postulated that all three types of interactions arise as a consequence of the fact that our world is symmetrical with respect to three types of gauge transformations.

It is stated that the particles-carriers of interactions introduced by the model are:

• 8 gluons for the hypothetical strong interaction (symmetry group SU(3));
• 3 heavy gauge bosons (W ± -bosons, Z 0 -boson) for the hypothetical weak interaction (symmetry group SU(2));
• 1 photon for electromagnetic interaction (symmetry group U(1)).

It is argued that the hypothetical weak force can mix fermions from different generations, which leads to the instability of all but the lightest particles, as well as to such effects as CP violation and hypothetical neutrino oscillations.

2 Standard model and fundamental interactions

In reality, the following types of fundamental interactions exist in nature, as well as the corresponding physical fields:

The presence in nature of other really existing fundamental physical fields, except for finitely fabulous fields (fields of quantum "theory": gluon, Higgs field and an.), Physics has not established (but in mathematics there can be as many as you like). The existence in nature of a hypothetical strong and hypothetical weak interaction postulated by quantum theory - not proven, and is justified only by the desires of the Standard Model. These hypothetical interactions are just guesses. - In nature, there are nuclear forces, which are reduced to (really existing in nature) electromagnetic interactions of nucleons in atomic nuclei, but the instability of elementary particles is determined by the presence of decay channels and the absence of a ban on the part of the laws of nature, and has nothing to do with the fabulous weak interaction.

The existence in nature of the key elements of the Standard Model: quarks and gluons has not been proven. What in experiments is interpreted by some physicists as traces of quarks - allows other alternative interpretations. Nature is so arranged that the number of hypothetical quarks coincided with the number of standing waves of alternating electro magnetic field inside elementary particles. - But in nature there is no fractional electric charge equal to the charge of hypothetical quarks. Even the magnitude of the dipole electric charge does not coincide with the magnitude of the imaginary electric charge of fictitious quarks. And as you understand Without quarks, the Standard Model cannot exist..

From the fact that in 1968, in experiments on deep inelastic scattering at the Stanford Linear Accelerator (SLAC), it was confirmed that protons have an internal structure, and consist of three objects (two u- and one d-quark - but this is NOT proven), which later, Richard Feynman called partons in the framework of his parton model (1969), one more conclusion can be drawn - in the experiments, standing waves of a wave alternating electromagnetic field were observed, the number of antinodes of which exactly coincides with the number of fabulous quarks (partons) . And the boastful statement of the world's Wikipedia that "the totality of the current experimental facts does not question the validity of the model" is false.

3 Standard model and gauge bosons

• The existence of gauge bosons in nature has not been proven - these are just assumptions of quantum theory. (W ± -bosons, Z 0 -boson) are ordinary vector mesons the same as D-mesons.
• Quantum theory needed carriers of the interactions it postulated. But since there were no such in nature, the most suitable of the bosons were taken and the ability to be carriers of the required hypothetical interaction was attributed.

4 Standard model and gluons

The fact is that with hypothetical gluons, the Standard Model turned out to be embarrassing.

Recall what a gluon is - these are hypothetical elementary particles responsible for the interactions of hypothetical quarks. talking mathematical language, gluons are called vector gauge bosons responsible for the hypothetical strong color interaction between hypothetical quarks in quantum chromodynamics. In this case, the hypothetical gluons are assumed to themselves carry a color charge and thus are not just carriers of hypothetical strong interactions, but also participate in them themselves. A hypothetical gluon is a quantum of a vector field in quantum chromodynamics, has no rest mass and has unit spin (like a photon). In addition, the hypothetical gluon is its own antiparticle.

So, it is argued that the gluon has a unit spin (like a photon) and is its own antiparticle. - So: according to Quantum mechanics and Classical electrodynamics (and the Field theory of elementary particles, which managed to make them work together for a common result), which determined the spectrum of elementary particles in nature - to have a unit spin (like a photon) and be an antiparticle to itself, only one elementary a particle in nature is a photon, but it is already occupied by electromagnetic interactions. All other elementary particles with unit spin are vector mesons and their excited states, but these are completely different elementary particles, each of which has its own antiparticle.

And if we recall that all vector mesons have a non-zero rest mass (a consequence of the non-zero value of the quantum number L of the field theory), then none of the vector mesons (particles with integer spin) as a fabulous gluon will in any way fit. Well, there are NO more elementary particles with a unit spin in nature. In nature, there may be complex systems, consisting of an even number of leptons, or baryons! But the lifetime of such formations of elementary particles will be much less than the lifetime of the fabulous Higgs boson - or rather, the vector meson. Therefore, hypothetical gluons cannot be found in nature, no matter how much they are searched for and how many billions of Euros or dollars are spent searching for fabulous particles. And if a statement about their discovery is heard somewhere, this will NOT correspond to reality.

Therefore, there is no place in nature for gluons.. Having created a fairy tale about the strong interaction, instead of the nuclear forces actually existing in nature, by analogy with the electromagnetic interaction, the "Quantum Theory" and the "Standard Model", being confident in their infallibility, drove themselves into a dead end. - So maybe it's time to stop and stop believing in mathematical FAIRY TALES.

5 Standard model and the law of conservation of energy

Implementation of interactions of elementary particles through the exchange of virtual particles directly violates the law of conservation of energy and any mathematical manipulations over the laws of nature in science are unacceptable. Nature and the virtual world of mathematics are two around the world: real and fictional - the world of mathematical fairy tales.

Gluons - hypothetical carriers of the hypothetical strong interaction of hypothetical quarks, having a fabulous ability to create new gluons from nothing (from vacuum) (see article confinement), openly ignore the law of conservation of energy.

Thus, the standard model contradicts the law of conservation of energy.

6 Standard model and electromagnetism.

The Standard Model, unwittingly, was forced to recognize the presence of constant dipole electric fields in elementary particles, the existence of which is confirmed by the Field theory of elementary particles. Asserting that elementary particles consist of hypothetical quarks, which (according to the Standard Model) are carriers of electric charge, the Standard Model thereby recognized the presence inside the proton, in addition to the region with a positive electric charge, also a region with a negative electric charge, and the presence of a pair of regions with opposite electric charges. charges and for an electrically "neutral" neutron. Surprisingly, the magnitudes of the electric charges of these regions almost coincided with the magnitudes of the electric charges arising from the field theory of elementary particles.

So the Standard Model was able to describe the internal electric charges neutral and positively charged baryons, but with negatively charged baryons there was a misfire. Since the negatively charged hypothetical quarks have a charge of –e/3, three negatively charged quarks are required to obtain a total charge of –e, and a dipole electric field analogous to the electric field of a proton will not work. Of course, one could use anti-quarks, but then instead of a baryon, one would get an anti-baryon. So the "success" of the Standard Model in describing the electric fields of baryons was limited only to neutral and positively charged baryons.

If you look at the hypothetical quark structure of mesons with zero spin, then electric dipole fields are obtained only for neutral mesons, and for charged mesons, an electric dipole field cannot be created from two hypothetical quarks - charges do NOT allow. So, when describing the electric fields of mesons with zero spin, the Standard Model obtained only electric fields of neutral mesons. Here, too, the magnitudes of the electric charges of the dipole regions almost coincided with the magnitudes of the electric charges arising from the field theory of elementary particles.

But there is another grouping of elementary particles called vector mesons - these are mesons with unit spin, in which each particle necessarily has its own antiparticle. Experimenters have already begun to discover them in nature, but the Standard Model, in order not to deal with their structure, prefers to label some of them as carriers of interactions invented by it (spin equal to one- what you need). Here, the Standard Model obtained only the electric fields of neutral mesons, since the number of quarks did not change (their spins were simply rotated so that they did not subtract, but added).
Let's sum up the intermediate result. The success of the Standard Model in describing the structure of the electric fields of elementary particles turned out to be half-hearted. It is understandable: the fit in one place crawled out with a discrepancy in another place.

Now regarding the masses of hypothetical quarks. If we add up the masses of hypothetical quarks in mesons or baryons, we get a small percentage of the rest mass of an elementary particle. Consequently, even within the framework of the Standard Model, inside elementary particles there is a mass of non-quark nature, which is much greater than the total value of the masses of all its hypothetical quarks. Therefore, the statement of the Standard Model that elementary particles consist of quarks is NOT true. Inside elementary particles there are more powerful factors than hypothetical quarks, which create the main value of the gravitational and inertial mass of elementary particles. The field theory of elementary particles together with the Theory of gravitation of elementary particles established that behind all this is a wave polarized alternating electromagnetic field that creates wave properties elementary particles, which determines their statistical behavior and, of course, quantum mechanics.

One more moment. Why, in a bound system of two particles (quarks) with a half-integer spin, the spins of the particles must necessarily be antiparallel (the need for this in the Standard Model in order to obtain the spin of mesons is not yet a law of nature). The spins of the interacting particles can also be parallel, and then you get a duplicate of the meson, but with a single spin and a slightly different rest mass, which nature naturally did not create - it does not care about the needs of the Standard Model with its fairy tales. Physics knows the interaction, with a spin-oriented dependence - these are the interactions of magnetic fields, so unloved by quantum "theory". This means that if hypothetical quarks exist in nature, then their interactions are magnetic (naturally, I don’t remember fabulous gluons) - these interactions create attractive forces for particles with antiparallel magnetic moments (and hence antiparallel spins, if the vectors of the magnetic moment and spin are parallel) and do not allow creating a bound state of a pair of particles with parallel magnetic moments (parallel orientation of spins), because then the attractive forces turn into the same repulsive forces. But if the binding energy of the pair magnetic moments is a certain value (0.51 MeV for π ± and 0.35 MeV for π 0), then in the magnetic fields of the particles themselves there is (approximately) an order of magnitude more energy, and hence the mass corresponding to it - the electromagnetic mass of a constant magnetic field.

Having admitted the presence of dipole electric fields in elementary particles, the Standard Model forgot about the magnetic fields of elementary particles, the existence of which has been proven experimentally, and the values ​​of the magnetic moments of elementary particles have been measured with a high degree of accuracy.

Inconsistencies between the Standard Model and magnetism are clearly seen in the example of pi-mesons. So, hypothetical quarks have electric charges, which means they also have a constant electric field, and they also have a constant magnetic field. According to the laws of classical electrodynamics, which has not yet been canceled, these fields have internal energy, and hence the mass corresponding to this energy. So the total magnetic mass of constant magnetic fields of a pair of hypothetical quarks of charged π ± -mesons is 5.1 MeV (out of 7.6 MeV), and for π 0 -mesons 3.5 MeV (out of 4 MeV). Let's add to this mass the electric mass of constant electric fields of elementary particles, because it is also different from zero. As the linear dimensions of the charges decrease, the energy of these fields constantly increases, and very quickly there comes a moment when all 100% of the internal energy of a hypothetical quark is concentrated in its constant electromagnetic fields. Then what remains for the quark itself is the answer: NOTHING, which is what the Field theory of elementary particles claims. And the allegedly observed "traces of hypothetical quarks" turn into traces of standing waves of an alternating electromagnetic field, which they actually are. But there is one feature: the standing waves of the wave alternating electromagnetic field, what the Standard Model gives out as "Quarks", cannot create constant electric and magnetic fields that elementary particles have). So we come to the conclusion that there are NO quarks in nature, and elementary particles consist of a wave polarized alternating electromagnetic field, as well as constant electric and magnetic dipole fields associated with it, which is what the Field theory of elementary particles claims.

With mass values, the Standard Model established that all pi-mesons have a residual internal energy, which is consistent with the data of the Field Theory of Elementary Particles about the wave alternating electromagnetic field contained inside the elementary particles. But if more than (95-97)% of the internal energy of elementary particles is not of a quark nature and is concentrated in a wave alternating electromagnetic field, and of the remaining (3-5)% attributed to hypothetical quarks, (80-90)% is concentrated in constant electric and magnetic fields of elementary particles, then the unsubstantiated assertion that these elementary particles consist of quarks not found in nature looks RIDICULAR, even within the framework of the Standard Model itself.

The quark composition of the proton in the Standard Model turned out to be even more deplorable. The total mass of 2 u-quarks and one d-quark is 8.81 MeV, which is less than 1 percent of the proton rest mass (938.2720 MeV). That is, 99 percent of the proton has something that creates its main gravitational and inertial mass along with its nuclear forces and this is NOT related to quarks, but we, with persistence worthy of a better application, continue to be told the pseudoscientific tale that the proton supposedly consists of quarks that have never been found in nature, despite all the effort and financial resources expended, and they want us to believe this SCAM. - Mathematics is able to compose any FAIRY TALE and pass it off as the "highest" achievement of "science". Well, if you use science, then according to the calculations of the fields of the proton using field theory, its constant electric field contains an energy of 3.25 MeV, and the rest of the energy for the mass of hypothetical quarks is borrowed from the much more powerful constant magnetic field of the proton, which creates its nuclear forces.

7 Standard Model and field theory of elementary particles

• The field theory of elementary particles denies the existence of quarks and gluons not found in nature, denies the existence of hypothetical strong and weak interactions (postulated by quantum theory) and the correspondence of unitary symmetry to reality.
• The tau lepton is the excited state of the muon, and its neutrino is the excited state of the muon neutrino.
• (W ± -bosons, Z 0 -boson) are ordinary vector mesons and are not carriers of interactions associated with ignoring the law of conservation of energy, as well as other laws of nature.
• A photon exists in nature only in a real state. The virtual state of elementary particles is a mathematical manipulation of the laws of nature.
• Nuclear forces are mainly reduced to the interactions of the magnetic fields of nucleons in the near zone.
• The reasons for the decay of unstable elementary particles are based on the presence of decay channels and the laws of nature. An elementary particle, like an atom or its nucleus, tends to a state with the lowest energy - only its possibilities are different.
• The so-called "neutrino oscillations", or rather reactions, are based on the difference in their rest masses, leading to the decay of a heavier muon neutrino. In general, the fabulous transformation of one elementary particle into another contradicts the laws of electromagnetism and the law of conservation of energy. - Different types of neutrinos have different sets of quantum numbers, as a result of which they electromagnetic fields differ, they have a different value of the total internal energy, and, accordingly, a different value of the rest mass. Unfortunately, mathematical manipulation of the laws of nature has become the norm for fairy tale theories and models of physics in the 20th century.

8 Particles in physics through the eyes of the world's Wikipedia at the beginning of 2017

This is what Particles in physics look like from the point of view of the world Wikipedia:

I overlaid a couple of colors on this picture, which is passed off as reality, because it needs additions. The green color highlights what is true. It turned out a little, but this is ALL that was found reliable. A lighter color highlights what is also in nature, but they are trying to blow it into us as something else. Well, all colorless creations are from the world of FAIRY TALES. And now the additions themselves:

• The fact that there are NO quarks in nature - the supporters of the Standard Model itself do not want to know, slipping us all new FAIRY TALES to "substantiate" the invisibility of quarks in experiments.
• Of the ground states of Leptons, according to the Field Theory of Elementary Particles, only an electron with a muon with the corresponding neutrinos and antiparticles exist in nature. The value of the spin of a tau lepton, equal to 1/2, does not yet mean that this particle belongs to the ground states of leptons - they simply have the same spins. Well, the number of excited states for each elementary particle is equal to infinity - a consequence of the Field theory of elementary particles. Experimenters have already begun to discover them and discovered many excited states of other elementary particles, except for the tau lepton, but they themselves have not yet understood this. Well, the fact that for some, the Field theory of elementary particles, like a bone in the throat, will be tolerated, and even better if they relearn.
• There are NO gauge bosons in nature - in nature there are just elementary particles with unit spin: these are photon and vector mesons (which they like to pass off as carriers of fabulous interactions, for example, "weak" interaction) with their excited states, as well as the first excited state of mesons.
• The fabulous Higgs bosons contradict the Theory of gravitation of elementary particles. We are under the guise of the Higgs boson trying to blow vector meson.
• Fundamental particles do NOT exist in nature - just elementary particles exist in nature.
• Superpartners are also from the world of FAIRY TALES, like other hypothetical fundamental particles. Today one cannot blindly believe in fairy tales, regardless of the name of the author. You can invent any particle: Dirac's "magnetic monopole", a Planck particle, a parton, different types quarks, spirits, "sterile" particles, graviton (gravitino) ... - that's just ZERO evidence. - Do not pay attention to any pseudo-scientific dummy, issued for the achievement of science.
• Composite particles in nature there is, but these are not baryons, hyperons and mesons. - These are atoms. atomic nuclei, ions and molecules of baryonic matter, as well as compounds of electron neutrinos emitted in gigantic quantities by stars.
• According to the field theory of elementary particles, in nature there should be groupings of baryons with different values ​​of half-integer spin: 1/2, 3/2, 5/2, 7/2, .... I wish experimenters success in discovering baryons with large spins.
• Mesons are divided into simple (with zero spin) with their excited states (historically called resonances), and into vector (with integer spin). Physics has already begun to discover vector mesons in nature, despite the lack of noticeable interest in them among experimenters.
• Short-lived artificially created exotic atoms, in which the electron was replaced by another, more massive elementary particle - this is from the world of "physicists having fun." And they have no place in the megaworld.
• There are no exotic hadrons in nature, since there is NO strong interaction in nature (but there are simply nuclear forces, and these are different concepts), and therefore, there are no hadrons in nature, including exotic ones.

You can invent any particle as a prop for a pseudo-theory, and then pass it off as a triumph of "science", only nature does not care about this.

Today it is clear that it is IMPOSSIBLE to trust information about elementary particles located in the world Wikipedia. To the truly reliable experimental information, they added unfounded statements of abstract theoretical constructions, posing as the highest achievements of science, but in reality ordinary mathematical FAIRY TALES. The world's Wikipedia has burned out on blind trust in the information of publishers who earn money on science, accept articles for publication for the money of authors - that's why those who have money are published, instead of those who have ideas that develop SCIENCE. This is what happens when scientists are pushed aside in the global Wikipedia, and the content of articles is NOT controlled by specialists. Supporters of mathematical fairy tales contemptuously call the fight against their dogmas "alternativeism", forgetting that at the beginning of the 20th century, the very physics of the microcosm arose as an alternative to the then prevailing delusions. While studying the microcosm, physics has found a lot of new things, but along with genuine experimental data, a stream of abstract theoretical constructions has also poured into physics, studying something of their own and posing as the highest achievement of science. Perhaps in the virtual world created by these theoretical constructions, the "laws of nature" invented by them work, but physics studies nature itself and its laws, and mathematicians can have fun as much as they want. Today 21st century physics is just trying to cleanse itself of the delusions and swindle of the 20th century.

9 Standard model and fitting to reality

String theorists, comparing it to the Standard Model and campaigning for string theory, claim that the Standard Model has 19 free parameters to fit experimental data.

They are missing something. When the Standard Model was still called the quark model, only 3 quarks were enough for it. But as it developed, the Standard Model needed to increase the number of quarks to 6 (lower, upper, strange, charmed, lovely, true), and each hypothetical quark was also endowed with three colors (r, g, b) - we get 6 * 3 =18 hypothetical particles. They also needed to add 8 gluons, which had to be endowed with a unique ability called "confinement". 18 fairy quarks plus 8 fairy gluons, for which there was also no place in nature - this is already 26 fictional objects, except for 19 free fitting parameters. – The model grew with new fictional elements to fit new experimental data. But the introduction of colors for fairy quarks turned out to be not enough, and some have already started talking about complex structure quarks.

The transformation of the quark model into the Standard Model is a process of adjustment to reality, in order to avoid the inevitable collapse, leading to an exorbitant growth of the Lagrangian:

And no matter how the Standard Model is built up with new "abilities", it will not become scientific from this - the foundation is false.

10 Physics of the 21st century: The Standard Model - summary

The Standard Model (of elementary particles) is just a hypothetical construction that does not correlate well with reality, no matter how it is customized:

• The symmetry of our world with respect to the three types of gauge transformations has not been proven;
• Quarks are not found in nature at any energy - There are NO quarks in nature;
• Gluons cannot exist in nature at all.;
• The existence of a weak interaction in nature has not been proven, and nature does not need it;
• The strong force was invented instead of nuclear forces (actually existing in nature);
• Virtual particles contradict the law of conservation of energy- the fundamental law of nature;
• The existence of gauge bosons in nature has not been proven - there are simply bosons in nature.

I hope you can clearly see: on what foundation the Standard Model is built.

Not found, not proven, etc. this does not mean it has not yet been found and has not yet been proven - it means that there is no evidence of the existence in nature of the key elements of the Standard Model. Thus, the Standard Model is based on a false foundation that does not correspond to nature. Therefore, the Standard Model is a fallacy in physics. Supporters of the Standard Model want people to continue believing the Standard Model's tales or they will have to relearn. They simply ignore criticism of the Standard Model, presenting their opinion as the solution of science. But when misconceptions in physics continue to be replicated, despite their inconsistency proven by science, misconceptions in physics turn into a SCAM in physics.

The main patron of the Standard Model, a collection of unproven mathematical assumptions (simply speaking, a collection of mathematical FAIRY TALES, or according to Einstein) can also be attributed to misconceptions in physics: a set of crazy ideas concocted from incoherent scraps of thoughts") called "Quantum Theory", which does not want to reckon with the fundamental law of nature - the law of conservation of energy. As long as quantum theory continues to selectively take into account the laws of nature and engage in mathematical manipulations, its achievements will hardly be attributed to scientific ones. A scientific theory must strictly operate within laws of nature, or to prove the inaccuracy of such, otherwise it will be beyond the bounds of science.

At one time, the Standard Model played a certain positive role in the accumulation of experimental data on the microworld - but that time has come to an end. Well, since the experimental data were obtained and continue to be obtained using the Standard Model, the question arises about their reliability. The quark composition of discovered elementary particles has nothing to do with reality. - Therefore, the experimental data obtained using the Standard Model need additional verification, outside the framework of the model.

In the twentieth century, great hopes were placed on the Standard Model, it was presented as the highest achievement of science, but the twentieth century ended, and with it the time of domination in physics of another mathematical fairy tale, built on a false foundation, called: "The Standard Model of Elementary Particles" . Today, the fallacy of the Standard Model is NOT noticed by those who do NOT want to notice it.

Vladimir Gorunovich

Regulations

The standard model consists of the following provisions:

• All matter consists of 24 fundamental quantum fields of spin ½, the quanta of which are fundamental particles - fermions, which can be combined into three generations of fermions: 6 leptons (electron, muon, tau lepton, electron neutrino, muon neutrino and tau neutrino), 6 quarks (u, d, s, c, b, t) and 12 corresponding antiparticles.
• Quarks participate in strong, weak, and electromagnetic interactions; charged leptons (electron, muon, tau-lepton) - in weak and electromagnetic; neutrinos - only in weak interactions.
• All three types of interactions arise as a consequence of the postulate that our world is symmetrical with respect to three types of gauge transformations. The particles-carriers of interactions are bosons:

8 gluons for strong interaction (symmetry group SU(3)); 3 heavy gauge bosons (W + , W − , Z 0) for weak interaction (symmetry group SU(2)); one photon for electromagnetic interaction (symmetry group U(1)).

• Unlike the electromagnetic and strong interactions, the weak interaction can mix fermions from different generations, leading to the instability of all but the lightest particles, and to effects such as CP violation and neutrino oscillations.
• The external parameters of the standard model are:
  • the masses of leptons (3 parameters, neutrinos are assumed to be massless) and quarks (6 parameters), interpreted as interaction constants of their fields with the field of the Higgs boson,
  • parameters of the CKM quark mixing matrix - three mixing angles and one complex phase that breaks the CP symmetry - constants of interaction of quarks with an electroweak field,
  • two parameters of the Higgs field, which are uniquely related to its vacuum expectation value and the mass of the Higgs boson,
  • three interaction constants associated with the gauge groups U(1), SU(2), and SU(3), respectively, and characterizing the relative intensities of the electromagnetic, weak, and strong interactions.

Due to the discovery of neutrino oscillations, the standard model needs an extension that introduces an additional 3 neutrino masses and at least 4 parameters of the PMNS neutrino mixing matrix similar to the CKM quark mixing matrix, and possibly 2 more mixing parameters if neutrinos are Majorana particles. Also, the vacuum angle of quantum chromodynamics is sometimes included among the parameters of the standard model. It is noteworthy that mathematical model with a set of 20-odd numbers is able to describe the results of millions of experiments carried out to date in physics.

Beyond the Standard Model

see also

Notes

Literature

• Emelyanov V. M. The standard model and its extensions. - M .: Fizmatlit, 2007. - 584 p. - (Fundamental and applied physics). - ISBN 978-5-922108-30-0

Links

Wikimedia Foundation. 2010 .

See what the "Standard Model" is in other dictionaries:

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Books

• Particle Physics - 2013. Quantum electrodynamics and the Standard Model, O. M. Boyarkin, G. G. Boyarkina. In the second volume of a two-volume book containing a modern course in elementary particle physics, quantum electrodynamics is considered as the first example of the theory of real interactions.…