Force carrier

In particle physics, force carriers or messenger particles or intermediate particles are particles that give rise to forces between other particles. These particles are bundles of energy (quanta) of a particular kind of field. There is one kind of field for every type of elementary particle. For instance, there is an electron field whose quanta are electrons, and an electromagnetic field whose quanta are photons. The force carrier particles that mediate the electromagnetic, weak, and strong interactions are called gauge bosons.

In particle physics, quantum field theories such as the Standard Model describe nature in terms of fields. Each field has a complementary description as the set of particles of a particular type. A force between two particles can be described either as the action of a force field generated by one particle on the other, or in terms of the exchange of virtual force carrier particles between them.

The energy of a wave in a field (for example, electromagnetic waves in the electromagnetic field) is quantized, and the quantum excitations of the field can be interpreted as particles. The Standard Model contains the following particles, each of which is an excitation of a particular field:

In addition, composite particles such as mesons can be described as excitations of an effective field.

Gravity is not a part of the Standard Model, but it is thought that there may be particles called gravitons which are the excitations of gravitational waves. The status of this particle is still tentative, because the theory is incomplete and because the interactions of single gravitons may be too weak to be detected.

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