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Which subatomic particles are considered elementary particles?
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subatomic particle
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world's most powerful particle accelerator. At the LHC, located underground in Switzerland, physicists study subatomic particles.
Elementary particles are defined as the fundamental constituents of matter that possess no discernible internal structure and cannot be reduced into smaller components. It is a common misconception to label particles like the proton or neutron as elementary; these are actually complex, composite particles made of smaller building blocks.12
The primary categories of elementary particles include:
- Quarks: Fundamental building blocks that combine to form larger particles like nucleons.12
- Leptons: A distinct group of elementary particles that includes the electron, the neutrino, and the muon.12
- Force Particles: Particles responsible for mediating fundamental forces, such as photons and gluons.2
- Higgs Boson: An elementary particle required by gauge theories to account for the masses of other elementary particles.3
These particles are classified within the Standard Model, which provides the current theoretical framework for understanding the fundamental forces and constituents of the universe.2