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❪◑❫ Subatomic Particles ○｜Definition｜1st｜20260113133728-00-⌔

Subatomic particle - Wikipedia

Subatomic particle

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In physics, a subatomic particle is a particle smaller than an atom.1 According to the Standard Model of particle physics, a subatomic particle can be a composite particle or an elementary particle. A composite particle, such as a proton or a neutron, is composed of other particles while an elementary particle, such as an electron, is not composed of other particles.2 Particle physics and nuclear physics study these particles and how they interact.3 Most force-carrying particles such as photons or gluons are called bosons and, although they have quanta of energy, do not have rest mass or discrete diameters (other than pure energy wavelength) and are unlike the former particles that have rest mass and cannot overlap or combine, which are called fermions. The W and Z bosons, however, are an exception to this rule and have relatively large rest masses at approximately 80 GeV/c and 90 GeV/c respectively.

Experiments show that light can behave like a stream of particles (called photons) as well as exhibiting wave-like properties. This led to the concept of wave–particle duality to reflect that quantum-scale particles behave both like particles and like waves; they are occasionally called wavicles to reflect this.4

Another concept, the uncertainty principle, states that some of their properties taken together, such as their simultaneous position and momentum, cannot be measured exactly.5 Interactions of particles in the framework of quantum field theory are understood as creation and annihilation of quanta of corresponding fundamental interactions. This blends particle physics with field theory.

Even among particle physicists, the exact definition of a particle varies. These professional attempts at the definition of a particle include:6

  • A particle is a collapsed wave function
  • A particle is an excitation of a quantum field
  • A particle is an irreducible representation of the Poincaré group
  • A particle is an observed thing

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Printed 2026-06-28.

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Footnotes

  1. “Subatomic particles”. NTD. Archived from the original on 16 February 2014. Retrieved 5 June 2012. ↩

  2. Bolonkin, Alexander (2011). Universe, Human Immortality and Future Human Evaluation. Elsevier. p. 25. ISBN 978-0-12-415801-6. ↩

  3. Fritzsch, Harald (2005). Elementary Particles. World Scientific. pp. 11–20. ISBN 978-981-256-141-1. ↩

  4. Hunter, Geoffrey; Wadlinger, Robert L. P. (August 23, 1987). Honig, William M.; Kraft, David W.; Panarella, Emilio (eds.). Quantum Uncertainties: Recent and Future Experiments and Interpretations. Springer US. pp. 331–343. doi:10.1007/978-1-4684-5386-7_18. The finite-field model of the photon is both a particle and a wave, and hence we refer to it by Eddington’s name “wavicle”. ↩

  5. Heisenberg, W. (1927). “Über den anschaulichen Inhalt der quantentheoretischen Kinematik und Mechanik”. Zeitschrift für Physik (in German). 43 (3–4): 172–198. Bibcode:1927ZPhy…43..172H. doi:10.1007/BF01397280. S2CID 122763326. ↩

  6. “What is a Particle?”. 12 November 2020. ↩

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