Questions tagged [carrier-particles]
Use for force carrier particles, quanta of characteristic quantum fields, usually gauge fields, such as the quanta of electromagnetic fields (photons), of the electroweak interactions (EW bosons), and of the strong interactions (gluons); elastic forces on on a lattice (phonons); nuclear forces (pions); gravity forces (gravitons), etc. May include conjectural particles from GUTS (like their proton-decay-inducing gauge bosons).
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Understanding Virtual Particles and the Mediation of Forces
When trying to understand how the electromagnetic force works in a Quantum-Mechanic context (what mediates it), one concept you will quickly encounter is that of virtual photons (and more generally ...
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Does a massless boson imply an infinite interaction distance?
As we know, if we use the Lagrangian of electrodynamics we can find that the photon has no mass. If the photon had mass, it would even have 3 polarizations, which is a consequence of having mass. My ...
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Why did Peter Higgs, et al. suspect that the $W$ boson(s) had mass? All the way back in 1963, '64?
I cannot understand why so many people (the PRL Symmetry authors) were so sure that the weak interaction particles had mass.
The gluon, for instance, and its attendant strong force are also very short ...
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Why are $W$ and $Z$ bosons called 'intermediate' vector bosons?
What does the 'intermediate' part mean? Somehow, I thought an answer would be easy to come across, but I have yet to find one.
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Are gravitons suggested as the cause of matter curving space?
My understand is that GR says that mass curves space but it does not say why or how this occurs. Is the idea of gravitons that they are the entities that actually affect space?
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What is the current most widely-accepted explanation of gravity? [closed]
What do physicists typically say gives gravity the ability to act on a pair of objects?
I am not asking for a description of gravity as a scalar field, but rather what the current accepted theory is ...
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Understanding attractive/repulsive boson-mediated forces based on interference of free-space fields
I just worked through the derivations of the Yukawa interaction for scalar and spin one particles (i.e. Peskin and Schroeder, end of chapter 4, which covers the tree-level Feynman diagram). It's very ...
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Can the Coulomb potential as the vacuum energy shift in QED also be calculated with a field quantized in the Coulomb gauge?
This answer explains how the Coulomb-potential can be calculated as the energy shift of the (photon) ground state for 2 charges fixed in place. This calculation has been done for a covariant "...
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How forces are mediated if virtual particles are only a mathematical artifacts? [duplicate]
I was reading this post, that discusses whether if virtual particles do exist; stating that they are only a mathematical artifact that arises from perturbation theory. My question is, if virtual ...
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Why do gravity and electricity sometimes obey inverse square laws over the same distance scale?
Is this a chance mathematical coincidence or is there a good physical explanation for it?
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Does quantum field theory forbid spin-2 gravitons from carrying a charge that would make them repel each other increasingly with decreasing distance? [closed]
Can repulsive gravitons account for why gravity is weak compared to other forces and would they stop singularities from forming?
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Is it possible to construct theory where fermions are force carriers?
Supersymmetry is a model based on symmetry between bosons and fermions. Bosons carry force and they are described by potentials. Fermions are matter particle and they are described by wavefunctions. ...
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What force is the axion the mediator of? [closed]
I keep seeing in the literature that the axion is a force-carrier. I assume this is because it has spin 0, and all integer-spin particles are force-carriers. But I cannot find anywhere what force ...
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Why do gauge particles with odd spin cause opposite charges to attract, while those with even spin cause them to repel? What's the math behind it?
I have read that opposite charges attract when mediated by odd-spin gauge particles, like the photon, and that they repel when mediated by even-spin gauge particles, like the graviton.
Is there an ...
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Are static electric and magnetic fields flows of virtual photons? [duplicate]
Many electromagnetic interactions are modeled as exchanges of a real photons: e.g. an excited electron can relax and emit a photon. Somewhere else, a photon and an electron can interact, "...
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