GeV

GeV stands for gigaelectronvolt, a unit of energy widely used in particle physics. An electronvolt is the energy gained by an electron moving across a potential difference of one volt; one GeV equals 10^9 eV, and in joules it is about 1.602176634×10^-10 J. The GeV is commonly used to express the energies of particles and, when expressed as mass, GeV/c^2. In many theoretical and experimental contexts, physicists use natural units with c = ħ = 1, so energy, mass, and momentum are all measured in GeV and the relation E^2 = p^2 + m^2 applies with m in GeV.

Common scales and examples help illustrate the unit. The electron has a mass of about 0.000511 GeV, the proton about 0.938 GeV, while the W and Z bosons have masses around 80–90 GeV and 91 GeV, respectively, and the Higgs boson is about 125 GeV. In collider physics, energies are often quoted in TeV (teraelectronvolts), where 1 TeV = 1000 GeV; the Large Hadron Collider operates at center-of-mass energies around 7–13 TeV.

GeV is not an SI unit; it is part of a family with MeV and keV. In SI terms, 1 GeV ≈ 1.602×10^-10 J. For mass, expressions like GeV/c^2 are used, though in natural units the c factors are absorbed and masses are given directly in GeV. GeV remains a practical and widely adopted unit in describing high-energy phenomena and particle properties.