A suggested at Physics from Symmetry by Jakob Schwichtenberg (2015) chapter 3.9 "Elementary particles", it appears that in the Standard Model, the behaviour of each particle can be uniquely defined by the following five numbers:
E.g. for the electron we have:
- mass:
- spin: 1/2
- electric charge:
- weak charge: -1/2
- color charge: 0
Once you specify these properties, you could in theory just pluck them into the Standard Model Lagrangian and you could simulate what happens.
Setting new random values for those properties would also allow us to create new particles. It appears unknown why we only see the particles that we do, and why they have the values of properties they have.
The different only shows up for field, not with particles. For fields, there are two types of changes that we can make that can keep the Lagrangian unchanged as mentioned at Physics from Symmetry by Jakob Schwichtenberg (2015) chapter "4.5.2 Noether's Theorem for Field Theories - Spacetime":
- spacetime symmetry: act with the Poincaré group on the Four-vector spacetime inputs of the field itself, i.e. transforming into
- internal symmetry: act on the output of the field, i.e.:
From defining properties of elementary particles:
- spacetime:
- internal
From the spacetime theory alone, we can derive the Lagrangian for the free theories for each spin:Then the internal symmetries are what add the interaction part of the Lagrangian, which then completes the Standard Model Lagrangian.