Atomism Revisited

The ancient atomism inspires us to reconsider everything as being composed of indivisible entities, known today as quanta of actions. The quantum of light is the familiar single quantum in its open waveform. Likewise, any other physical action is a geometric notion in terms of energy and time. The quantized systems, e.g., elementary particles take forms of geodesics, i.e., paths of least action in quest for energetic balance with surrounding quanta. The fine-structure constant, as the ratio of two actions corresponding to the electron and neutrino, allows us to deduce unambiguously the characteristic symmetries of leptons, mesons, and baryons. We exemplify the quantized structures of photon, neutrino, electron, proton, and neutron as well as those of weak bosons and the Higgs boson. This universal description can be related to quantum field theory (QFT) so that the quantized entity, e.g., an elementary particle, is the source for surrounding field quanta, expressly those that embody vacuum. Moreover, we model some nuclei, among them chemically important 12C, as high-symmetry complexes of nucleons. The elementary ingredients can be assembled to models of atoms to illustrate notions of quantum mechanics. Finally, we discuss the four fundamental forces and their relative strengths in terms of actions.