Timeline of atomic and subatomic physics

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{{Use dmy dates|date=August 2019}}

A timeline of atomic and subatomic physics, including particle physics.

Antiquity

  • 6th - 2nd Century BCE Kanada (philosopher) proposes that anu is an indestructible particle of matter, an "atom"; anu is an abstraction and not observable.{{cite book|url=http://www.ece.lsu.edu/kak/roopa51.pdf|title=Space, Time and Anu in Vaisheshika|last=Narayan|first=Rupa|publisher=Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, USA|year=2013}}
  • 430 BCE{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=pheL_ubbXD0C&pg=PA214|title=Lost Discoveries: The Ancient Roots of Modern Science|last=Teresi|first=Dick|publisher=Simon and Schuster|year=2010|isbn=978-1-4391-2860-2|pages=213–214}} Democritus speculates about fundamental indivisible particles—calls them "atoms"

The beginning of chemistry

The age of quantum mechanics

Quantum field theory

The formation and successes of the Standard Model

  • 1963 Nicola Cabibbo develops the mathematical matrix by which the first two (and ultimately three) generations of quarks can be predicted.
  • 1964 Murray Gell-Mann and George Zweig propose the quark/aces modelYndurain, Francisco Jose; Quantum Chromodynamics: An Introduction to the Theory of Quarks and Gluons, Springer Verlag, New York, 1983. {{ISBN|0-387-11752-0}}Frank Wilczek (1999) "[https://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/9803075 Quantum field theory]", Reviews of Modern Physics 71: S83–S95. Also doi=10.1103/Rev. Mod. Phys. 71.
  • 1964 François Englert, Robert Brout, Peter Higgs, Gerald Guralnik, C. R. Hagen, and Tom Kibble postulate that a fundamental quantum field, now called the Higgs field, permeates space and, by way of the Higgs mechanism, provides mass to all the elementary subatomic particles that interact with it. While the Higgs field is postulated to confer mass on quarks and leptons, it represents only a tiny portion of the masses of other subatomic particles, such as protons and neutrons. In these, gluons that bind quarks together confer most of the particle mass. The result is obtained independently by three groups: François Englert and Robert Brout; Peter Higgs, working from the ideas of Philip Anderson; and Gerald Guralnik, C. R. Hagen, and Tom Kibble.{{cite journal| first1=F. | last1=Englert | first2=R. | last2=Brout| year=1964| title=Broken Symmetry and the Mass of Gauge Vector Mesons| journal=Physical Review Letters| volume=13 | pages=321–323| doi=10.1103/PhysRevLett.13.321| bibcode=1964PhRvL..13..321E| issue=9| doi-access=free}}{{cite journal| first1=P.W. | last1=Higgs| year=1964| title=Broken Symmetries and the Masses of Gauge Bosons| journal=Physical Review Letters| volume=13 | pages=508–509| doi=10.1103/PhysRevLett.13.508| bibcode=1964PhRvL..13..508H| issue=16| doi-access=free}}{{cite journal| first1=G.S. | last1=Guralnik | first2=C.R. | last2=Hagen | first3=T.W.B. | last3=Kibble| year=1964| title=Global Conservation Laws and Massless Particles| journal=Physical Review Letters| volume=13 | pages=585–587| doi=10.1103/PhysRevLett.13.585| bibcode=1964PhRvL..13..585G| issue=20| doi-access=free}}{{cite journal| first1=G.S. | last1=Guralnik| year=2009| title=The History of the Guralnik, Hagen and Kibble development of the Theory of Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking and Gauge Particles| journal=International Journal of Modern Physics A| volume=24 | pages=2601–2627| doi=10.1142/S0217751X09045431| arxiv=0907.3466|bibcode = 2009IJMPA..24.2601G| issue=14| s2cid=16298371}}{{cite journal|first=T.W.B. | last=Kibble|year=2009|title=Englert–Brout–Higgs–Guralnik–Hagen–Kibble mechanism|journal=Scholarpedia|volume=4 |issue=1 |page=6441|doi=10.4249/scholarpedia.6441|bibcode = 2009SchpJ...4.6441K |doi-access=free}}{{cite web|author1=M. Blume |author2=S. Brown |author3=Y. Millev |year=2008|url=http://prl.aps.org/50years/milestones#1964|title=Letters from the past, a PRL retrospective (1964)|publisher=Physical Review Letters|accessdate=2010-01-30}}{{cite web|year=2010|url=http://www.aps.org/units/dpf/awards/sakurai.cfm|title=J. J. Sakurai Prize Winners|publisher=American Physical Society|accessdate=2010-01-30}}
  • 1964 Murray Gell-Mann and George Zweig independently propose the quark model of hadrons, predicting the arbitrarily named up, down, and strange quarks. Gell-Mann is credited with coining the term quark, which he found in James Joyce's book Finnegans Wake.
  • 1964 Sheldon Glashow and James Bjorken predict the existence of the charm quark. The addition is proposed because it allows for a better description of the weak interaction (the mechanism that allows quarks and other particles to decay), equalizes the number of known quarks with the number of known leptons, and implies a mass formula that correctly reproduced the masses of the known mesons.
  • 1964 John Stewart Bell shows that all local hidden variable theories must satisfy Bell's inequality
  • 1964 Peter Higgs considers the breaking of local phase symmetry
  • 1964 Val Fitch and James Cronin observe CP violation by the weak force in the decay of K mesons
  • 1967 Bruno Pontecorvo postulated neutrino oscillation;
  • 1967 Steven Weinberg and Abdus Salam publish papers in which they describe Yang–Mills theory using the SU(2) X U(1) supersymmetry group, thereby yielding a mass for the W particle of the weak interaction via spontaneous symmetry breaking.
  • 1967 Steven Weinberg puts forth his electroweak model of leptonsWeinberg, Steven; The Quantum Theory of Fields: Foundations (vol. I), Cambridge University Press (1995) {{ISBN|0-521-55001-7}}. The first chapter (pp. 1–40) of Weinberg's monumental treatise gives a brief history of Q.F.T., pp. 608.Weinberg, Steven; The Quantum Theory of Fields: Modern Applications (vol. II), Cambridge University Press:Cambridge, U.K. (1996) {{ISBN|0-521-55001-7}}, pp. 489.
  • 1968 Stanford University: Deep inelastic scattering experiments at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) show that the proton contains much smaller, point-like objects and is therefore not an elementary particle. Physicists at the time are reluctant to identify these objects with quarks, instead calling them partons — a term coined by Richard Feynman. The objects that are observed at SLAC will later be identified as up and down quarks. Nevertheless, "parton" remains in use as a collective term for the constituents of hadrons (quarks, antiquarks, and gluons). The existence of the strange quark is indirectly validated by the SLAC's scattering experiments: not only is it a necessary component of Gell-Mann and Zweig's three-quark model, but it provides an explanation for the kaon (K) and pion (π) hadrons discovered in cosmic rays in 1947.
  • 1969 John Clauser, Michael Horne, Abner Shimony and Richard Holt propose a polarization correlation test of Bell's inequality
  • 1970 Sheldon Glashow, John Iliopoulos, and Luciano Maiani propose the charm quark
  • 1971 Gerard 't Hooft shows that the Glashow-Salam-Weinberg electroweak model can be renormalized* Gerard 't Hooft (2007) "[http://www.phys.uu.nl/~thooft/lectures/basisqft.pdf The Conceptual Basis of Quantum Field Theory]" in Butterfield, J., and John Earman, eds., Philosophy of Physics, Part A. Elsevier: 661-730.
  • 1972 Stuart Freedman and John Clauser perform the first polarization correlation test of Bell's inequality
  • 1973 Frank Anthony Wilczek discover the quark asymptotic freedom in the theory of strong interactions; receives the Lorentz Medal in 2002, and the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2004 for his discovery and his subsequent contributions to quantum chromodynamics.{{cite journal|arxiv=hep-th/9803075|doi=10.1103/RevModPhys.71.S85|title=Quantum field theory|year=1999|last1=Wilczek|first1=Frank|journal=Reviews of Modern Physics|volume=71|issue=2|pages=S85–S95|bibcode = 1999RvMPS..71...85W |s2cid=279980 }}
  • 1973 Makoto Kobayashi and Toshihide Maskawa note that the experimental observation of CP violation can be explained if an additional pair of quarks exist. The two new quarks are eventually named top and bottom.
  • 1973 David Politzer and Frank Anthony Wilczek propose the asymptotic freedom of quarks
  • 1974 Burton Richter and Samuel Ting: Charm quarks are produced almost simultaneously by two teams in November 1974 (see November Revolution) — one at SLAC under Burton Richter, and one at Brookhaven National Laboratory under Samuel Ting. The charm quarks are observed bound with charm antiquarks in mesons. The two discovering parties independently assign the discovered meson two different symbols, J and ψ; thus, it becomes formally known as the J/ψ meson. The discovery finally convinces the physics community of the quark model's validity.
  • 1974 Robert J. Buenker and Sigrid D. Peyerimhoff introduce the multireference configuration interaction method.
  • 1975 Martin Perl discovers the tau lepton
  • 1977 Leon Lederman observes the bottom quark with his team at Fermilab.{{Cite web|title=Fermilab {{!}} Science {{!}} Particle Physics {{!}} Key Discoveries|url=https://www.fnal.gov/pub/science/particle-physics/key-discoveries.html|access-date=2020-08-26|website=www.fnal.gov}} This discovery is a strong indicator of the top quark's existence: without the top quark, the bottom quark would be without a partner that is required by the mathematics of the theory.
  • 1977 Martin Lewis Perl discovered the tau lepton after a series of experiments;
  • 1977 Steve Herb finds the upsilon resonance implying the existence of the beauty/bottom quark
  • 1979 Gluon observed indirectly in three-jet events at DESY;
  • 1982 Alain Aspect, J. Dalibard, and G. Roger perform a polarization correlation test of Bell's inequality that rules out conspiratorial polarizer communication
  • 1983 Carlo Rubbia and Simon van der Meer discovered the W and Z bosons;
  • 1983 Carlo Rubbia, Simon van der Meer, and the CERN UA-1 collaboration find the W and Z intermediate vector bosonsPais, Abraham; Inward Bound: Of Matter & Forces in the Physical World, Oxford University Press (1986) {{ISBN|0-19-851997-4}} Written by a former Einstein assistant at Princeton, this is a beautiful detailed history of modern fundamental physics, from 1895 (discovery of X-rays) to 1983 (discovery of vectors bosons at C.E.R.N.)
  • 1989 The Z intermediate vector boson resonance width indicates three quark–lepton generations
  • 1994 The CERN LEAR Crystal Barrel Experiment justifies the existence of glueballs (exotic meson).
  • 1995 The top quark is finally observed by a team at Fermilab after an 18-year search. It has a mass much greater than had been previously expected — almost as great as a gold atom.
  • 1995 The D0 and CDF experiments at the Fermilab Tevatron discover the top quark.
  • 1998 – The Super-Kamiokande (Japan) detector facility reports experimental evidence for neutrino oscillations, implying that at least one neutrino has mass.{{cite journal |first=Y. |last=Fukuda |collaboration=Super-Kamiokande Collaboration |title=Evidence for Oscillation of Atmospheric Neutrinos |journal=Physical Review Letters |volume=81 |issue=8 |date=24 August 1998 |pages=1562–1567 |doi=10.1103/PhysRevLett.81.1562 |display-authors=etal |arxiv=hep-ex/9807003 |bibcode=1998PhRvL..81.1562F}}
  • 1998 Super-Kamiokande (Japan) observes evidence for neutrino oscillations, implying that at least one neutrino has mass.
  • 1999 Ahmed Zewail wins the Nobel prize in chemistry for his work on femtochemistry for atoms and molecules.{{cite web|title=Press Release: The 1999 Nobel Prize in Chemistry|url=https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1999/press.html|access-date=30 June 2013|date=12 October 1999}}
  • 2000 scientists at Fermilab announce the first direct evidence for the tau neutrino, the third kind of neutrino in particle physics.
  • 2000 CERN announced quark-gluon plasma, a new phase of matter.{{Cite web|title=New State of Matter created at CERN|url=https://home.cern/news/press-release/cern/new-state-matter-created-cern|website=CERN|language=en|access-date=2020-05-22}}
  • 2001 the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (Canada) confirm the existence of neutrino oscillations. Lene Hau stops a beam of light completely in a Bose–Einstein condensate.{{cite web|url=http://www.physicscentral.com/explore/people/hau.cfm |title=Lene Hau |publisher=Physicscentral.com |date= |accessdate=2013-01-30}}
  • 2001 The Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (Canada) confirms the existence of neutrino oscillations.
  • 2005 the RHIC accelerator of Brookhaven National Laboratory generates a "perfect" fluid, perhaps the quark–gluon plasma.{{Cite web|title=RHIC Scientists Serve Up 'Perfect' Liquid|url=https://www.bnl.gov/newsroom/news.php?a=110303|access-date=2020-08-26|website=Brookhaven National Laboratory|language=en}}
  • 2010 The Large Hadron Collider at CERN begins operation with the primary goal of searching for the Higgs boson.
  • 2012 Higgs boson-like particle discovered at CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC).{{Cite web|title=CERN experiments observe particle consistent with long-sought Higgs boson|url=https://home.cern/news/press-release/cern/cern-experiments-observe-particle-consistent-long-sought-higgs-boson|website=CERN|language=en|access-date=2020-05-22}}
  • 2014 The LHCb experiment observes particles consistent with tetraquarks and pentaquarks {{cite journal| author1=LHCb Collaboration |title=Observation of the Resonant Character of the Z ( 4430 ) − State |journal=Physical Review Letters |date=4 June 2014 |volume=112 |issue=22 |page=222002 |doi=10.1103/PhysRevLett.112.222002|pmid=24949760 |s2cid=904429 |hdl=2445/133080 |hdl-access=free }}
  • 2014 The T2K and OPERA experiment observe the appearance of electron neutrinos and Tau neutrinos in a muon neutrino beam{{cite journal |author1=((T2K Collaboration)) |title=Observation of Electron Neutrino Appearance in a Muon Neutrino Beam |journal=Physical Review Letters |date=10 February 2014 |volume=112 |issue=6 |pages=061802 |doi=10.1103/PhysRevLett.112.061802|pmid=24580687 |arxiv=1311.4750 |bibcode=2014PhRvL.112f1802A |hdl=10044/1/20051 |s2cid=2586182 |hdl-access=free }}{{cite journal |author1=OPERA Collaboration |title=Observation of tau neutrino appearance in the CNGS beam with the OPERA experiment |journal=Progress of Theoretical and Experimental Physics |date=28 October 2014 |volume=2014 |issue=10 |pages=101C01 |doi=10.1093/ptep/ptu132|doi-access=free |arxiv=1407.3513 }}

See also

References

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