Elementary particle

A elementary particle is one that has no internal structure; that is, both theoretically and experimentally there are no constituent particles that combine to make it up. It has proven true historically that particles considered "elementary" in one epoch, the atom for example, are later found to be composite. Another example is the set of mesons, once thought to be the elementary quanta whose exchange between neutrons and protons embodied the nuclear force, but now considered to be made up of quarks.

In the Standard Model elementary particles fall into different groups: the group of "particles" themselves, which fall under the classifications of leptons and quarks, and the particles that mediate the interactions between them, the force carriers or field quanta, that fall under the categories of photons, weak bosons, and gluons.