You are here. What we do. Using our expertise and experience GCHQ is part of the team which protects the UK, along with law enforcement and the other intelligence agencies. Working with HMG and industry, we defend Government systems from cyber threat, provide support to the Armed Forces and strive to keep the public safe, in real life and online.
So the electromagnetic force holds matter together, but in a quantum mechanical way. As for metallic bonds I have no clue how that works. The idea seems to be that a sea of electrons acts as a glue that holds together an array of nucleons. Not sure how Schrodinger's equation gets you that.
Forces and carrier particles. There are four fundamental forces at work in the universe: the strong force, the weak force, the electromagnetic force, and the gravitational force. They work over different ranges and have different strengths. Gravity is the weakest but it has an infinite range. The electromagnetic force also has infinite range but it is many times stronger than gravity. The weak and strong forces are effective only over a very short range and dominate only at the level of subatomic particles.