A particle that exists only for an extremely brief instant as an intermediary in a process. The intermediate or virtual particle stages of a process cannot be directly observed. If they were observed, we might think that conservation of energy was violated. However, the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle (which can be written as Δ . /2) allows an apparent violation of the conservation of energy. If one sees only the initial decaying particle (such as a meson with the quark) and the final decay products (such as + + +), one observes that energy is conserved. The `` virtual'' particle (such as the ±) exists for such a short time that it can never be observed. ± boson: A carrier particle of the weak interactions. It is involved in all electric-charge-changing weak processes.

A particle created and destroyed in so short a time that violations of energy conservation (in its creation) cannot be detected.

A particle that exists only for an extremely brief instant in an intermediary process. Then the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle allows an apparent violation of the conservation of energy. However, if one sees only the initial decaying particle and the final decay products, one observes that the energy is conserved. [ ] [ Close Glossary

In physics, a virtual particle is a particle-like abstraction used in some models of quantum field theory. Virtual particles exhibit some of the phenomena that real particles do such as conservation of charge. Virtual particles cannot be directly detected, and they do not necessarily respect some of the most fundamental laws associated with physical particles.