Instructional Master

LSM 13.4-1

Feynman Diagrams of Force Carriers

Time

Figure 3
A Feynman diagram depicting the electromagnetic
force. The vertical axis represents time and the horizontal axis represents position (Feynman diagrams
can be drawn with or without the time/space axes.)
The red wavy line represents a virtual photon
exchanged between the two electrons. The photon
transmits momentum and energy from one electron
to the other. Since the transfer is not quite instantaneous (the speed of the photon, c, is finite), the line
is not quite horizontal.

photon

electron

electron

Space

(a)

meson

neutron

proton

Figure 4
The strong nuclear force. The virtual
particle exchanged this time is the
carrier of the strong nuclear force
rather than the photon, which carries the electromagnetic force.

(b)

up
p

down
up

p+

down
e

n
p

(c)

p0

Figure 6
A Feynman diagram depicting b
decay. Only one quark is affected. The
result is a particle with two up quarks
and one down (a proton) as well as a
b particle and an antineutrino.

Figure 5
Feynman diagrams of nucleon
nucleon interactions through the
exchange of virtual pions
(a) neutronproton interaction
(b) protonneutron interaction
(c) protonproton interaction

Copyright 2003 Nelson

Chapter 13 Radioactivity and Elementary Particles 373