Source: Ibtidah

By Aqeel Ahmed *

There are four fundamental forces in nature, namely, electromagnetism, weak nuclear force, strong nuclear force and gravity. Electromagnetism can be observed in daily life experience. For instance, lighting is a natural phenomenon. Weak nuclear force is manifested in radioactivity, which is used to cure cancer. Strong nuclear force, on the other hand, is responsible for keeping the nucleus (protons and neutron) together. Whereas, the gravity is observed in everyday life, for example, the planets of solar system rotate around the sun due to gravity.

It is important to note that electromagnetism and gravity are long range forces, i.e., these forces can act for longer distances, whereas, weak and strong nuclear forces are only manifested at very short distances, i.e., of the size of a nuclei which is about 10^-15 m. Gravity is very weak as compared to other three fundamental forces and it only manifests itself on massive objects. Since the mass fundamental particles like electrons or quarks (which are the building blocks of protons and neutrons) are very small, therefore, they don’t feel gravity as compared to the strength of others three forces. Hence in the study of the properties of elementary particles, physicists normally don’t consider the gravity, therefore, we are left with three forces, electromagnetism, weak and strong nuclear forces.

All the forces described above are mediated between the particles by force carrier particles called “gauge bosons”. For example, the electromagnetic force between the two electrons is mediated by “photons”. You may imagine it as how the force between two badminton players is mediated by a “shuttlecock”. Similarly all the fundamental forces are mediated by the gauge bosons. Since there are four fundamental forces in nature, therefore, the “gauge bosons” are of four different kinds. Depending on the nature of force, their properties are different. For our purpose to understand the role of Higgs field/boson, only two forces are important; namely the electromagnetism and the weak nuclear force.

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* Author is doing PhD in Theoretical High Energy Phsyics at University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland and is member of Theoretical Physics Group at National Centre for Physics, Islamabad, Pakistan.