The Unification of Electromagnetism with the Weak Force

DEC 01, 1989

Maxwell unified electricity, magnetism and optics. The theory that now unifies quantum electrodynamics with the weak nuclear force is a comparable triumph.

DOI: 10.1063/1.881185

Paul Langacker

Alfred K. Mann

The year 1983 marked the end of a particularly noteworthy decade in the development of elementaryparticle physics. Between 1973 and 1983 there were three accomplishments of special, perhaps historic, importance:

▹ The theoretical and experimental unification of the forces that govern all of the phenomena of both electromagnetism and the weak interactions.

▹ The recognition that the strongly interacting particles (nucleons, mesons and other hadrons) are in fact made of still smaller entities, now known as quarks, and the development of a tentative theory of the force between the quarks.

▹ The identification of three almost identical (except for mass) families of elementary “particles,” each family consisting of two quarks, one charged lepton (the electron, the muon or the tau) and a neutrino.

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More about the Authors

Paul Langacker. University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.

Alfred K. Mann. University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.