Electroweak Theory

electroweak theory, in physics, the theory that describes both the electromagnetic force and the weak force. Superficially, these forces appear quite different. The weak force acts only across distances smaller than the atomic nucleus, while the electromagnetic force can extend for great distances (as observed in the light of stars reaching across entire galaxies), weakening only with the square of the distance. Moreover, comparison of the strength of these two fundamental interactions between two protons, for instance, reveals that the weak force is some 10 million times weaker than the electromagnetic force. Yet one of the major discoveries of the 20th century has been that these two forces are different facets of a single, more-fundamental electroweak force.

The electroweak theory arose principally out of attempts to produce a self-consistent gauge theory for the weak force, in analogy with quantum electrodynamics (QED), the successful modern theory of the electromagnetic force developed during the 1940s. There are two basic requirements for the gauge theory of the weak force. First, it should exhibit an underlying mathematical symmetry, called gauge invariance, such that the effects of the force are the same at different points in space and time. Second, the theory should be renormalizable; i.e., it should not contain nonphysical infinite quantities.

During the 1960s Sheldon Lee Glashow, Abdus Salam, and Steven Weinberg independently discovered that they could construct a gauge-invariant theory of the weak force, provided that they also included the electromagnetic force. Their theory required the existence of four massless “messenger” or carrier particles, two electrically charged and two neutral, to mediate the unified electroweak interaction. The short range of the weak force indicates, however, that it is carried by massive particles. This implies that the underlying symmetry of the theory is hidden, or “broken,” by some mechanism that gives mass to the particles exchanged in weak interactions but not to the photons exchanged in electromagnetic interactions. The assumed mechanism involves an additional interaction with an otherwise unseen field, called the Higgs field, that pervades all space.

In the early 1970s Gerardus ’t Hooft and Martinus Veltman provided the mathematical foundation to renormalize the unified electroweak theory proposed earlier by Glashow, Salam, and Weinberg. Renormalization removed the physical inconsistencies inherent in earlier calculations of the properties of the carrier particles, permitted precise calculations of their masses, and led to more-general acceptance of the electroweak theory. The existence of the force carriers, the neutral Z particles and the charged W particles, was verified experimentally in 1983 in high-energy proton-antiproton collisions at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN). The masses of the particles were consistent with their predicted values.

The characteristics of the unified electroweak force, including the strength of the interactions and the properties of the carrier particles, are summarized in the Standard Model of particle physics.