Episode 163: The Standard Model of Particle Physics
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What is the historical background and purpose of the Standard Model?
Hello, you're listening to the Science of Everything Podcast, episode 163, The Standard Model of Particle Physics. I'm your host, James Fodor. So this episode we're going to talk about the different particles and their interactions that um uh exists for all of the other forces beyond just electromagnetism, which is what we discussed in the the previous episode in this series, quantum electrodynamics. So this is an extension of that episode. Particularly we're going to be talking about the weak and strong nuclear forces and how they can be described using the formalism of quantum field theory and then we'll put everything together and talk about the different categories of particles, leptons, quarks, fermions, bosons, and so forth.
So we'll discuss each of these particles, how they relate to the three different fundamental forces, and how all of these different things are organized within the context of the standard model. Recommended pre-listening, as I've indicated, is episodes 158 and 159 on quantum electrodynamics. And those episodes in turn have a number of prerequisites. So I'm going to be assuming that you know something about quantum field theory and quantum electrodynamics. So if not, I recommend listening to those episodes in advance. Although I won't go into quite as much detail about the formalism as we did in the quantum electrodynamics episode, but we will discuss things like the Grangians, uh equations of motion and and things like that.
So um I I'm assuming some amount of familiarity with those. So let's begin with a bit of introduction and historical background to understand this what the standard model is and how it relates to other theories in uh particle physics and quantum field theory. So the standard model describes the interactions of of three of the four fundamental forces that exist in nature, describes electromagnetism and then the weak and strong nuclear forces, or just the weak and strong forces as they're often called. The standard model does not describe the interactions of gravity. So gravity is the fourth force, and that is described using general relativity, which I've discussed in a previous episode. One of the major outstanding problems in physics is to integrate these theories of general relativity for gravity on one hand, and then the standard model for the other three forces on the other hand, and that is still very much an open problem.
So I'm not going to be talking Yeah. So quantum mechanics uh sort of originated early twentieth century, particularly the nineteen twenties and thirties, was when a lot of the initial work was completed. Those theories mostly describe Non-relativistic quantum mechanics of single particles. And so that is what you would likely study in introductory courses to quantum mechanics, and it's uh what I discussed in um the first episodes that I did as well on uh quantum mechanics. For example, episode 14: Principles of Quantum Mechanics. So there I talked about non-relativistic quantum mechanics and the Schrdinger equation and so forth. In the 1940s through 1960s, non-relativistic. relativistic quantum mechanics was developed into a more comprehensive and broader theory called quantum electrodynamics, which is able to describe quantum systems in which there are variable numbers of particles and at a relativistic uh at relativistic velocities.
Those are connected obviously because when you have very high energies uh of relativistic velocities, then you can also have interactions that change the numbers of of particles. So So um that is what I discussed in the two episodes on quantum electrodynamics that I that I talked about, uh episodes 158 and 159, and also the earlier more general theories, uh more general theory of quantum field theory, episode 85. However, as I described at the time Quantum electrodynamics only describes one of the four forces, which is the electromagnetic force. It does not apply to any of the other forces of nature. And so once essentially this theory of uh relativistic multiparticle or variable particle quantum mechanics, quantum electrodynamics, was developed by the late 1960s, there was a desire to expand that theory to account for other forces of nature.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is the historical background and purpose of the Standard Model?
0:33–12:32
2
How did scientists discover the weak and strong nuclear forces?
12:32–23:38
3
What are the three fundamental forces described by the Standard Model?
23:38–40:26
4
How does electromagnetism work and which particles does it affect?
40:26–45:07