Bootstrap model

The term "bootstrap model" is used for a class of theories that use very general consistency criteria to determine the form of a quantum theory from some assumptions on the spectrum of particles. It is a form of S-matrix theory.

In the 1960s and '70s, the ever-growing list of strongly interacting particles — mesons and baryons — made it clear to physicists that none of these particles are elementary. Geoffrey Chew and others went so far as to question the distinction between composite and elementary particles, advocating a "nuclear democracy" in which the idea that some particles were more elementary than others was discarded. Instead, they sought to derive as much information as possible about the strong interaction from plausible assumptions about the S-matrix, which describes what happens when particles of any sort collide, an approach advocated by Werner Heisenberg two decades earlier.