elementary particle

American  

noun

Physics.

1. any lepton, hadron, photon, or graviton, the particles once thought to be the indivisible components of all matter or radiation.

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elementary particle British  

noun

1. Also called: fundamental particle.  any of several entities, such as electrons, neutrons, or protons, that are less complex than atoms and are regarded as the constituents of all matter

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elementary particle Scientific  

/ ĕl′ə-mĕn′tə-rē /

1. Any of the smallest, discrete entities of which the universe is composed, including the quarks, leptons, and gauge bosons, which are not themselves made up of other particles. Most types of elementary particles have mass, though at least one, the photon, does not.

2. Also called fundamental particle

3. See also composite particle subatomic particle

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Closer Look

The smallest known units of matter, or elementary particles, are classified under three distinct groups: the quarks, the leptons, and the bosons. The six types or “flavors” of quarks are the up quark, the down quark, the charm quark, the strange quark, the top quark and the bottom quark. All quarks have mass, electric charge, and a special kind of charge called color, and each is associated with a distinct antiparticle, making twelve quarks in all. The leptons include the electron, the muon, the tau particle, the electron neutrino, the muon neutrino, and the tau neutrino. These particles also have distinct antiparticles; the neutrinos are electrically neutral and, if they do have mass, are extremely light. Each of these elementary particles interacts with other elementary particles through one or more forces: the electromagnetic force (between particles with electric charge), the strong force (between particles with color charge, such as the quarks), the weak force (between all leptons and quarks), and the gravitational force (between all particles). These forces are mediated by yet another set of elementary particles, the gauge bosons: when two particles interact, they exchange one or more gauge bosons. The gauge bosons include the W and Z bosons, which mediate the weak nuclear force, the gluon, which mediates the strong nuclear force, and the photon, which mediates the electromagnetic force. The hypothetical graviton, which would mediate the gravitational force, has not been isolated. A sixth boson, the Higgs boson, is believed to interact with the other elementary particles in such a way as to impart mass to them; it too has not been experimentally isolated. Though these particles are believed to be elementary, they can under certain circumstances change into other elementary particles. In beta decay, for example, an up quark turns into a down quark, emitting an electron and an electron antineutrino in the process. All known forms of matter and energy are made of combinations of and interactions between elementary particles; atoms, for example, are made of electrons orbiting a nucleus composed of quarks bound together into larger particles, the protons and neutrons. Whether these particles might themselves be composed of more fundamental building blocks is an open question, and the construction of a “theory of everything” that would explain the properties of all of the known particles and forces remains the ultimate goal for modern physics.

Etymology

Origin of elementary particle

First recorded in 1930–35

Example Sentences

Researchers believe it is composed of a still-undetected type of elementary particle.

From Science Daily • Oct. 14, 2025

Panpsychism may remain a controversial theory in science that contends that consciousness extends to everything in the universe down to the smallest elementary particle, but Pollini’s playing has something to say about it.

From Los Angeles Times • Mar. 27, 2024

Electric charge is conserved in nuclear and elementary particle reactions, even when elementary particles are produced or destroyed.

From Textbooks • Aug. 12, 2015

One finding of modern physics is that every elementary particle on nature’s menu has an evil-twin antiparticle with equal and opposite charge.

From New York Times • Feb. 10, 2015

There is, we are told, an infinite hierarchy of universes, so that an elementary particle, such as an electron, in our universe would, if penetrated, reveal itself to be an entire closed universe.

From "Cosmos" by Carl Sagan