ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

One-loop Feynman diagram

Have you ever seen those drawings of squiggly lines with different shapes all over them? They kinda look like a puzzle or a maze. Well, those drawings are called Feynman diagrams and they’re used to help scientists understand how particles behave in really tiny situations.

Now, when we talk about a “one-loop” Feynman diagram, we’re specifically talking about one type of these drawings. Imagine you have two particles, and they’re about to collide with each other. You draw a line between them to represent their collision. This is the most basic form of a Feynman diagram.

But sometimes things get a little more complicated than just two particles hitting each other. In some situations, these particles can interact with other particles in the environment which creates a feedback loop. It’s like if you were playing pinball and the ball kept bouncing back and forth between the flippers, creating a loop.

A one-loop Feynman diagram is when this feedback loop happens just once. It means that after the two particles hit and bounce off each other, they interact with another particle before bouncing off again. So now you have three lines instead of two.

These diagrams can help scientists understand how particles behave in certain situations, like in experiments using accelerators or in understanding how particles interact with each other in space. Even though they can look complicated at first, once you get the hang of reading them they can actually simplify things and make understanding particle behavior a bit easier!