[GeLe5000]

Hello.

I'd like to know if phycisists can explain how protons repel protons, electrons repel electrons, protons and electrons attract each other.

Is there an answer in "quantum field theory" or "quantum electrodynamics" or somewhere else ?

Thank you.

[Corribus]

The electromagnetic force is one of the four fundamental forces. I am not a theoretical physicist, but I think it's safe to say that although we know a lot about how these forces work, we know little about why they work. I'm sure an expert in QED could go on for ages about your question, but my guess is much of it would be so abstract as to be of very little use to you. For chemist, even a physical chemist, charge (and its mediator particle, the photon) as a concept is accepted as an axiomatic fundamental reality. Everything else pretty much derived from this piece of information.

[GeLe5000]

Thank your for your reply. And congratulations for this excellent, valuable website.

When I read "charge, and its mediator particle, the photon" it looks like a possible way to an answer.

[blaisem]

There was a similar discussion stack exchange that may offer more detail. Im on my phone so please excuse the poor formatting:

http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/197/how-are-forces-mediated

Im a little confused myself as the first top rated response talks about how photons mediate the interaction; however, the second top rated post seems to state that photons as mediating this interaction only serve as a convenient particle analogy in place of the wave interaction of overlapping fields. Other responses seem to corroborate the second post as i understood things.

I took this to mean that photons in this role are like phonons: a particle that we imagine exists so we can conveniently describe the interaction as occurring between particles. We refer to these as "virtual particles." You can read more under the wiki articles for "force carrier" and "virtual particle."

Basically, as corribus said, the underlying mechanism probably isnt well understood beyond as a fundamental property of nature.