Elementary particle

An elementary particle has no experimentally established internal structure and is not known to be composed of smaller particles. The Standard Model classifies known elementary particles as fermions or bosons.

Standard Model: The quantum field theory describing known elementary particles and three of the four fundamental interactions. It is the framework that classifies the known elementary particles.
Quantum field theory: A theoretical framework that treats particles as quantized excitations of fields. In modern theory, elementary particles are described as excitations of quantum fields.
Particle accelerator: A device that uses electromagnetic fields to accelerate charged particles to high energies. Accelerators produce collisions energetic enough to probe elementary particles.
Composite particle: A particle made of two or more constituent particles bound together. Unlike elementary particles, composites have internal constituents and structure.
Fermion: A particle with half-integer spin that obeys Fermi–Dirac statistics. Quarks and leptons are fermions, the matter-building family of elementary particles.
Quantum field: A field whose values are quantum operators and whose excitations can be observed as particles. Each type of elementary particle corresponds to a field in the Standard Model.
Particle detector: An instrument that records signals produced when particles interact with matter or fields. Detectors identify elementary particles from their measurable signatures.
Hadron: A composite particle made of quarks bound by the strong interaction. Hadrons such as protons are not elementary, though their quarks are.
Boson: A particle with integer spin that obeys Bose–Einstein statistics. Elementary bosons include force carriers and the Higgs particle.
Feynman diagram: A diagrammatic representation of terms in a perturbative calculation of particle interactions. These diagrams organize calculations of elementary-particle interactions.

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