I think that this topic is one that's likely to generate a lot of misconceptions when people answer it, since it's a complicated topic and analogies/explanations that are given by pop science are often not super accurate. So, in an effort to be more accurate I'm gonna try to walk you through some of the actual math. Don't worry if you don't know what individual terms mean-- I'm gonna give you a broad idea of what the equations are saying, and any detail I leave out can be safely ignored for this level of an explanation. Disclamer: I'm not a particle physicist, so take this with a grain of salt. I have taken a class in this stuff before but I would definitely defer to someone with a particle physics background if they disagree with something I've said. Alright, let's get started shall we?
TL;DR-- In the area where you used this weapon you might still have bound matter that is simlar to atoms but it would almost assuredly radically alter chemistry so as to kill everything living and completely change how matter behaves.
Terminology and Fundamentals
First off, let's start with some of the terminology used in particle physics. There's a lot, and I don't wan't to say stuff that I'm not explaining so strap in-- this is gonna be a long one. The most important term is the lagrangian of a system, denoted by $\mathcal{L}$. Basically, this is an expression that encodes all the dynamics of the universe. 800
In case you're curious, it does so via the <PERSON> path integral, but the specifics of this aren't really necessary-- you just need to know that $\mathcal{L}$ contains all the information about how the universe works.
Now, the total lagrangian of the universe can be split into the sum of smaller lagrangians, each one of which is governing the dynamic of some field. I realize the end of that sentence might be mumbo jumbo, but fret not! Fields are basically the "stuff" that fills the universe-- every particle that we see is an oscillation in some field. From a quantum field theory perspective, when we see two electrons, what we're really seeing is two oscillations in the electron field.
Now, fermions are the types of particles that we most often think of when we think of matter-- stuff like electrons and the quarks that make up protons/neutrons (to be precise, it's the half integer spin particles, but that's not important right now). Bosons are the other broad class of particles and are a bit more removed from every day experience with the exception of the photon. Broadly speaking, they tend to control the interactions between fermions, with note notable exception (you guessed it, the higgs). The three interactions that let fermions interact with each other via bosons are:
* electromagnetism, whose theory is called QED and whose mediating boson is the photon
* the weak interaction, whose theory is usually combined with electromagnetism for reasons I'll get into. The combined theory is called EWT, and the weak interaction has the $W^+$, $W^-$, and $Z$ bosons as mediators.
* the strong interaction, whose theory is called QCD and whose mediating bosons are the 8 gluons.
(Gravity is also considered a fundamental interaction, but is left off due to complications when you try to combine it with quantum mechanics).
With all that out of the way, let's start looking at some actual lagrangians! We'll start with the QED Lagrangian because it's the simplest, and because the Lagrangians for other interactions have very similar forms. I'm gonna write what the QED lagrangian looked like before <PERSON>'s theory, and then I'll revisit it to make a slight change after the next section. Wihout any further ado, the QED lagrangian is given by:
$$\mathcal{L}{QED} = \overline{\psi}_f i \gamma^{\mu}D{\mu}\psi_f- \overline{\psi}f m_f\psi_f-\frac{1}{4}F^{\mu \nu}F{\mu \nu}$$
Don't worry, I'll explain everything! The $\overline{\psi}f$ and $\psi_f$ are terms that basically just describe the state of some electrically charged, spin 1/2 fermion field $f$. 800