Standard Model Particle Explorer

Standard Model

Highlight generation All

Collision energy 130 GeV

Higgs threshold

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Heaviest visible

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Collisions

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Higgs events

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How it works

The Standard Model groups every known elementary particle into three families: 6 quarks and 6 leptons (matter, arranged in 3 generations of increasing mass), and 5 bosons that carry the fundamental forces — the photon (electromagnetism), gluon (strong force), W and Z (weak force) and the Higgs boson, whose field is what gives the other particles mass in the first place. On the right, two beams collide repeatedly; when the collision energy crosses the Higgs production threshold, a Higgs boson appears and promptly decays, exactly as it did at the LHC in 2012.

E = mc²  (mass–energy equivalence)
Higgs production requires  √s ≥ 2·m_H·c² ≈ 125 GeV
H → γγ, ZZ*, WW*, bb̄, ττ  (observed decay channels)

Highlight generation — the Standard Model repeats its quark/lepton pattern 3 times at increasing mass; this scrubs through generations 1 (lightest, e.g. up/down/electron), 2 and 3 (heaviest, e.g. top/bottom/tau).
Collision energy — the center-of-mass energy of each simulated proton-proton collision; below ≈125 GeV a Higgs boson cannot be produced, only lighter particles.
Family filter — isolates quarks, leptons or bosons so you can compare their masses and roles without the rest of the chart in the way.
Higgs field lines — every fermion's mass comes from interacting with the Higgs field; the lines are a schematic reminder of that interaction, not a literal force-carrier diagram.

Real-world relevance: this is a simplified version of exactly what the ATLAS and CMS detectors at CERN's Large Hadron Collider do millions of times per second — smash protons together at high energy and look for the statistically rare signature of a Higgs boson decaying into lighter, more easily detected particles.

Quarks Leptons Gauge bosons Higgs boson

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