The Standard Model

The Standard Model explains how the basic building blocks of matter interact, governed by four fundamental
forces. The theories and discoveries of thousands of physicists since the 1930s have resulted in a remarkable
insight into the fundamental structure of matter: everything in the universe is found to be made from a few basic
building blocks called fundamental particles, governed by four fundamental forces. Our best understanding of
how these particles and three of the forces are related to each other is encapsulated in the Standard Model of
particle physics. Developed in the early 1970s, it has successfully explained almost all experimental results and
precisely predicted a wide variety of phenomena. Over time and through many experiments, the Standard
Model has become established as a well-tested physics theory.

Matter particles

All matter around us is made of elementary particles, the building blocks of matter. These particles occur in two
basic types called quarks and leptons. Each group consists of six particles, which are related in pairs, or
generations. The lightest and most stable particles make up the first generation, whereas the heavier and less
stable particles belong to the second and third generations. All stable matter in the universe is made from
particles that belong to the first generation; any heavier particles quickly decay to the next most stable level.
The six quarks are paired in the three generations the up quark and the down quark form the first
generation, followed by the charm quark and strange quark, then the top quark and bottom (or beauty)
quark. Quarks also come in three different colours and only mix in such ways as to form colourless objects.
The six leptons are similarly arranged in three generations the electron and the electron neutrino, the
muon and the muon neutrino, and the tau and the tau neutrino. The electron, the muon and the tau all
have an electric charge and a sizeable mass, whereas the neutrinos are electrically neutral and have very little
mass.

Forces and carrier particles

There are four fundamental forces at work in the universe: the strong force, the weak force, the electromagnetic
force, and the gravitational force. They work over different ranges and have different strengths. Gravity is the
weakest but it has an infinite range. The electromagnetic force also has infinite range but it is many times
stronger than gravity. The weak and strong forces are effective only over a very short range and dominate only
at the level of subatomic particles. Despite its name, the weak force is much stronger than gravity but it is
indeed the weakest of the other three. The strong force, as the name suggests, is the strongest of all four
fundamental interactions.
Three of the fundamental forces result from the exchange of force-carrier particles, which belong to a broader
group called bosons. Particles of matter transfer discrete amounts of energy by exchanging bosons with each

other. Each fundamental force has its own corresponding boson the strong force is carried by the gluon, the
electromagnetic force is carried by the photon, and the W and Z bosons are responsible for the weak force.
Although not yet found, the graviton should be the corresponding force-carrying particle of gravity. The
Standard Model includes the electromagnetic, strong and weak forces and all their carrier particles, and explains
well how these forces act on all of the matter particles. However, the most familiar force in our everyday lives,
gravity, is not part of the Standard Model, as fitting gravity comfortably into this framework has proved to be a
difficult challenge. The quantum theory used to describe the micro world, and the general theory of relativity
used to describe the macro world, are difficult to fit into a single framework. No one has managed to make the
two mathematically compatible in the context of the Standard Model. But luckily for particle physics, when it
comes to the minuscule scale of particles, the effect of gravity is so weak as to be negligible. Only when matter
is in bulk, at the scale of the human body or of the planets for example, does the effect of gravity dominate. So
the Standard Model still works well despite its reluctant exclusion of one of the fundamental forces.
The Higgs boson
In the 1970s, physicists realized that there are very close ties between two of the four fundamental forces the
weak force and the electromagnetic force. The two forces can be described within the same theory, which forms
the basis of the Standard Model. This unification implies that electricity, magnetism, light and some types of
radioactivity are all manifestations of a single underlying force known as the electroweak force.
The basic equations of the unified theory correctly describe the electroweak force and its associated forcecarrying particles, namely the photon, and the W and Z bosons, except for a major glitch. All of these particles
emerge without a mass. While this is true for the photon, we know that the W and Z have mass, nearly 100
times that of a proton. Fortunately, theorists Robert Brout, Franois Englert and Peter Higgs made a proposal
that was to solve this problem. What we now call the Brout-Englert-Higgs mechanism gives a mass to the W
and Z when they interact with an invisible field, now called the Higgs field, which pervades the universe.
Just after the big bang, the Higgs field was zero, but as the universe cooled and the temperature fell below a
critical value, the field grew spontaneously so that any particle interacting with it acquired a mass. The more a
particle interacts with this field, the heavier it is. Particles like the photon that do not interact with it are left with
no mass at all. Like all fundamental fields, the Higgs field has an associated particle the Higgs boson. The
Higgs boson is the visible manifestation of the Higgs field, rather like a wave at the surface of the sea.
An elusive particle
A problem for many years has been that no experiment has observed the Higgs boson to confirm the theory. On
4 July 2012, the ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN's Large Hadron Collider announced they had each
observed a new particle in the mass region around 126 GeV. This particle is consistent with the Higgs boson but
it will take further work to determine whether or not it is the Higgs boson predicted by the Standard Model. The
Higgs boson, as proposed within the Standard Model, is the simplest manifestation of the Brout-Englert-Higgs
mechanism. Other types of Higgs bosons are predicted by other theories that go beyond the Standard Model.

The search for antimatter

The big bang should have created equal amounts of matter and antimatter. So why is there far more matter than
antimatter in the universe?

Asymmetry
The big bang should have created equal amounts of matter and antimatter in the early universe. But today,
everything we see from the smallest life forms on Earth to the largest stellar objects is made almost entirely of
matter. Comparatively, there is not much antimatter to be found. Something must have happened to tip the
balance. One of the greatest challenges in physics is to figure out what happened to the antimatter, or why we
see an asymmetry between matter and antimatter.
Antimatter particles share the same mass as their matter counterparts, but qualities such as electric charge are
opposite. The positively charged positron, for example, is the antiparticle to the negatively charged electron.
Matter and antimatter particles are always produced as a pair and, if they come in contact, annihilate one
another, leaving behind pure energy. During the first fractions of a second of the big bang, the hot and dense
universe was buzzing with particle-antiparticle pairs popping in and out of existence. If matter and antimatter
are created and destroyed together, it seems the universe should contain nothing but leftover energy.
Nevertheless, a tiny portion of matter about one particle per billion managed to survive. This is what we see
today. In the past few decades, particle-physics experiments have shown that the laws of nature do not apply
equally to matter and antimatter. Physicists are keen to discover the reasons why. Researchers have observed
spontaneous transformations between particles and their antiparticles, occurring millions of times per second
before they decay. Some unknown entity intervening in this process in the early universe could have caused
these "oscillating" particles to decay as matter more often than they decayed as antimatter.
Consider a coin spinning on a table. It can land on its heads or its tails, but it cannot be defined as "heads" or
"tails" until it stops spinning and falls to one side. A coin has a 50-50 chance of landing on its head or its tail, so
if enough coins are spun in exactly the same way, half should land on heads and the other half on tails. In the
same way, half of the oscillating particles in the early universe should have decayed as matter and the other half
as antimatter.
However, if a special kind of marble rolled across a table of spinning coins and caused every coin it hit to land
on its head, it would disrupt the whole system. There would be more heads than tails. In the same way, some
unknown mechanism could have interfered with the oscillating particles to cause a slight majority of them to
decay as matter. Physicists may find hints as to what this process might be by studying the subtle differences in
the behaviour of matter and antimatter particles created in high-energy proton collisions at the Large Hadron
Collider. Studying this imbalance could help scientists paint a clearer picture of why our universe is matterfilled.
Antimatter at CERN
The first atoms of antihydrogen the antimatter counterpart of the simplest atom, hydrogen were created at
CERN in 1995. An atom of antihydrogen consists of an antiproton and a positron (an antielectron), which
makes it the simplest antiatom. Unfortunately, this does not make it any easier to produce in the lab. It was a
difficult task both for the physicists and for the operation team at CERNs Low Energy Antiproton Ring
(LEAR) where the discovery of antihydrogen took place. The researchers allowed antiprotons circulating
inside LEAR to collide with atoms of a heavy element. Any antiprotons passing close enough to heavy atomic
nuclei could create an electron-positron pair; in a tiny fraction of cases, the antiproton would bind with the
positron to make an atom of antihydrogen.
However, the fleeting existence of the antiatoms meant that they could not be used for further studies. Each one
existed for only about 40 billionths of a second, travelling at nearly the speed of light over a path of 10 metres
before it annihilated with ordinary matter. In 2011, ALPHA an international collaboration currently running
experiments at CERN's Antiproton Decelerator facility succeeded in trapping antihydrogen atoms for 1000
seconds. By precise comparisons of hydrogen and antihydrogen, several experimental groups hope to study the

properties of antihydrogen and see if it has the same spectral lines as hydrogen. One group, AEGIS, will even
attempt to measure g, the gravitational acceleration constant, as experienced by antihydrogen atoms.
The ACE experiment is testing the use of antiprotons for cancer therapy. In 2015, a facility called ELENA will
enable all experiments working at the Antiproton Decelerator to get lower energy and more abundant antiproton
beams, making it even easier to produce antihydrogen in large quantities.
Unlike normal matter, dark matter does not interact with the electromagnetic force. This means it does not
absorb, reflect or emit light, making it extremely hard to spot. In fact, researchers have been able to infer the
existence of dark matter only from the gravitational effect it seems to have on visible matter. Dark matter seems
to outweigh visible matter roughly six to one, making up about 26% of all the matter in the universe. Here's a
sobering fact: The matter we know and that makes up all stars and galaxies only accounts for 4% of the content
of the universe! But what is dark matter? One idea is that it could contain "supersymmetric particles"
hypothesized particles that are partners to those already known in the Standard Model. Experiments at the Large
Hadron Collider (LHC) may provide more direct clues about dark matter.
Many theories say the dark matter particles would be light enough to be produced at the LHC. If they were
created at the LHC, they would escape through the detectors unnoticed. However, they would carry away
energy and momentum, so physicists could infer their existence from the amount of energy and momentum
missing after a collision. Dark matter candidates arise frequently in theories that suggest physics beyond the
Standard Model, such as supersymmetry and extra dimensions. One theory suggests the existence of a Hidden
Valley, a parallel world made of dark matter having very little in common with matter we know. If one of these
theories proved to be true, it could help scientists gain a better understanding of the composition of our universe
and, in particular, how galaxies hold together.
Dark energy

Dark energy makes up approximately 70% of the universe and appears to be associated with the vacuum in
space. It is distributed evenly throughout the universe, not only in space but also in time in other words, its
effect is not diluted as the universe expands. The even distribution means that dark energy does not have any
local gravitational effects, but rather a global effect on the universe as a whole. This leads to a repulsive force,
which tends to accelerate the expansion of the universe. The rate of expansion and its acceleration can be
measured by observations based on the Hubble law. These measurements, together with other scientific data,
have confirmed the existence of dark energy and provide an estimate of just how much of this mysterious
substance exists.