electroweak interaction
Sign in to saveAlso known as electroweak force, electroweak theory
unified description of electromagnetism and the weak interaction
In the Vinony graph
Vinony's link graph records 385 inbound references to electroweak interaction, and connects out to electromagnetism, weak interaction and Higgs boson.
It sits within the topics Electroweak theory and Steven Weinberg.
Vinony links it to 42 Wikipedia language editions.
Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- fundamental interaction
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- topic's main category
- Category:Electroweak theory
- Commons category
- Electroweak interaction
- Stack Exchange tag
- physics.stackexchange.com/tags/electroweak
- studied by
- Weinberg-Salam theory
via Wikidata · CC0
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Encyclopedic overview
In particle physics, the electroweak interaction or electroweak force is the unified description of two of the fundamental interactions of nature: electromagnetism (electromagnetic interaction) and the weak interaction. Although these two forces appear very different at everyday low energies, the theory models them as two different aspects of the same force. Above the unification energy, on the order of 246 GeV, they would merge into a single force. Thus, if the temperature is high enough – approximately 10 K – then the electromagnetic force and weak force merge into a combined electroweak force.
During the quark epoch (shortly after the Big Bang), the electroweak force split into the electromagnetic and weak force. It is thought that the required temperature of 10 K has not been seen widely throughout the universe since before the quark epoch, and currently the highest human-made temperature in thermal equilibrium is around 5.5×10 K (from the Large Hadron Collider).
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “electroweak interaction” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.