46 1/HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION TO THE ELEMENTARY PARTICLES particle. As it happens, the weak force (which is responsible for beta decay) is of extremely short range, so that Fermi’s model was not far from the truth, and yields excellent approximate results at low energies. However, it was widely recognized that this approach was bound to fail at high energies, and would eventually have to be supplanted with a theory in which the interaction was mediated by the exchange of some particle. The mediator came to be known by the prosaic name intermediate vector boson. The challenge for theorists was to predict the properties of the intermediate vector boson, and for experimentalists, to produce one in the laboratory. You may recall that Yukawa, faced with the analogous problem for the strong force, was able to estimate the mass of the pion in terms of the range of the force, which he took to be roughly the same as the size ofa nucleus. But we have no corresponding way to measure the range of the weak force; there are no “weak bound states” whose size would inform us—the weak force is simply too feeble to bind particles together. For many years predictions of the intermediate vector boson mass were little more than educated guesses (the “education” coming largely from the failure of experiments at progressively higher energies to detect the particle). By 1962 it was known that the mass had to be at least half the proton mass; 10 years later the experi- mental lower limit had grown to 2.5 proton masses. But it was not until the emergence of the electroweak theory of Glashow, Weinberg, and Salam that a really firm prediction of the mass was possible. In this theory there are in fact three intermediate vector bosons, two of them charged (W*) and one neutral (Z). Their masses were calculated to be? My =8242GeV/c2, Mz = 92+2 GeV/c? (1.30) In the late seventies, CERN began construction of a proton-antiproton collider designed specifically to produce these extremely heavy particles (bear in mind that the mass of the proton is 0.94 GeV/c?, so we're talking about something nearly 100 times as heavy). In January 1983 the discovery of the W (at 81 + 5 GeV/c?) was reported by Carlo Rubbia’s group,” and five months later the same team announced discovery of the Z (at 95 + 3 GeV/c”). These experiments represent an extraordinary technical triumph,“° and they were of fundamental importance in confirming a crucial aspect of the Standard Model, to which the physics community was by that time heavily committed (and for which a Nobel Prize had already been awarded). Unlike the strange particles or the y, however, the intermediate vector bosons were long awaited and universally expected, so the general reaction was a sigh of relief, not shock or surprise. 1.11 THE STANDARD MODEL (1978-7?) In the current view, then, all matter is made out of three kinds of elementary particles: leptons, quarks, and mediators. There are six leptons, classified ac-1.11 THE STANDARD MODEL (1978-7) aT cording to their charge (Q), electron number (Z,), muon number (L,), and tau number (L,). They fall naturally into three families (or generations): LEPTON CLASSIFICATION tle. wb Fist eseration e[4 1 9 0 » [a0 0 stootpnemin | # | “1 8 e eo eo ‘Third generation { There are also six antileptons, with all the signs reversed. The positron, for ex- ample, carries a charge of +1 and an electron number —1. So there are really 12 leptons, all told. Similarly, there are six “flavors” of quarks, which are classified according to charge, strangeness (S), charm (C), beauty (B), and truth (7). [For consistency, I suppose we should include “upness” (U) and “downness” (D), althovgh these terms are seldom used. They are redundant, inasmuch as the only qv.ark with S=C=B=T=0and Q = 3, for instance, is the up quark, so it is not necessary to specify U = 1 and D = 0 as well.] The quarks, too, fall into three generations: QUARK CLASSIFICATION ale oo uv s ce ri a a ce! -1 0 0 0 0 0 eee " i oo4 oo o 0 7 s | -4~ 0 0 0 0 (0 Second generatio 1 oa 9 0 8 8 »|--~ 0 0 0 o + 0 Third generation | | t i 20 09 0 9 0 4 Again, all signs would be reversed on the table of antiquarks. Meanwhile, each quark and antiquark comes in three colors, so there are 36 of them in all. Finally, every interaction has its mediators: the photon for the electro- magnetic force, two W’s and a Z for the weak force, the graviton (presumably) for gravity, ... but what about the strong force? In Yukawa’s original theory (1934) the mediator of strong forces was the pion, but with the discovery of heavy mesons this simple picture could not stand; protons and neutrons could now exchange rho’s and eta’s and K’s and phi’s and all the rest of them. The48 1/HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION TO THE ELEMENTARY PARTICLES Figure 1.15 The three generations of quarks and leptons, in order of increasing mass. quark model brought an even more radical revision, for if protons, neutrons, and mesons are complicated composite structures, there is no reason to believe their interaction should be simple. To study the strong force at the fundamental level, one should look, rather, at the interaction between individual quarks. So the question becomes: What particle is exchanged between two quarks, in a strong process? This mediator is called the g/uon, and in the Standard Model there are eight of them. As we shall see, the gluons themselves carry color, and therefore (like the quarks) should not exist as isolated particles. We can hope to detect gluons only within hadrons, or in colorless combinations with other gluons (glueballs). Nevertheless, there is substantial indirect experimental evidence for the existence of gluons: The deep inelastic scattering experiments showed that roughly half the momentum of a proton is carried by electrically neutral con- stituents, presumably gluons; the jet structure characteristic of proton scattering at high energies can be explained in terms of the disintegration of quarks and gluons in flight;** and glueballs may conceivably have been observed.‘” But no one would say that the experimental evidence is really compelling, at this stage. This is all adding up to an embarrassingly large number of supposedly “elementary” particles: 12 leptons, 36 quarks, 12 mediators (I won’t count the graviton, since gravity is not included in the Standard Model). And, as we shall see later, the Glashow-Weinberg-Salam theory calls for at least one Higgs particle, so we have a minimum of 61 particles to contend with. Informed by our expe- rience first with atoms and later with hadrons, many people have suggested that some, at least, of these 61 must be composites of more elementary subparticles (see Problem 1.17).** Such speculations lie beyond the Standard Model and outside the scope of this book. Personally, I do not think the large number of “elementary” particles in the Standard Model is by itself alarming, for they are tightly interrelated. The eight gluons, for example, are identical except for their colors, and the second and third generations mimic the first (Fig. 1.16). In the next chapter we shall see how this structure leads to the first systematic and comprehensive theory of elementary particle dynamics.