engleski

Introduction to the Standard Model

The Standard Model represents an astonishingly successful field theoretical description of particle physics -- it has sufficient content to describe all existing data at presently accessible energies. Whereas we face some calculational difficulties in the strong interaction sector, the experimental confirmation of the electroweak part at the quantum-loop level promotes a "model" into a "theory". A brief exposition of the symmetry-unification programme is followed by an overview of the underlying basic principles. These principles apply to the fundamental degrees of freedom -- the spin one-half quarks and leptons, the spin one gauge bosons, and spin zero Higgs fields. The last, the Higgs sector, seems to be the greatest weakness of the Standard Model. Therefore, the search for the Higgs boson is the outstanding challenge to defenders of the Standard Model. There is a list of unexplained parameters (nineteen independent parameters in the minimal version), which, together with the unexplained detailed structure of the Standard Model, calls for an understanding at the deeper level, beyond the Standard Model.

Standard Model; particle physics; quarks and leptons; gauge principle; unification principle; gauge bosons; Higgs field

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