We say that electric field is due to the existence of charge, gravitational field is due to mass. The Higgs field is due to what?
Dear Imad,
I think Stam is right as far as standard model goes. But in higher dimensional field theories and supersymmetric theories and string theories , the Higgs may result from other more fundamental causes.
Regards,
Rajat
The brief explanation of your question suggests that you are looking
at these fields from the point of view of an experimentalist.
From experimental point my answer is that Higgs scalar
was produced in LHC experiment in hadron collisions. It is
a massive `particle' with a very heavy mass
of 125 GeV approximately. Difference from gravitational
or electromagnetic field is that those are mass-less fields
mediating long range forces. Higgs mediates a very small
range force. You can calculate its deBroglie wavelength.
Higgs can also be virtually produced in electron positron
collision. This was done in past in the LEP experiment.
In short, we find this field in high energy collisions.
The electric field is a poor analogue for the Higgs because it is a gauge field carrier which in particular requires it to be both massless and of spin 1. So the Higgs is a qualitatively different kind of force. The source ("charge") is the bare mass (properly, the "Yukawa coupling") of the fundamental fermions of the standard model.
One way to think about this is that a massive scalar field with Yukawa couplings to fermions is a "relevant operator" of the renormalization group in 3+1 dimensions, and so there's no reason why there shouldn't be a Higgs.
Relevant operators: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renormalization_group#Relevant_and_irrelevant_operators.2C_universality_classes
See also here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrared_fixed_point
"There is a remarkable infrared fixed point of the coupling constants that determine the masses of very heavy quarks. In the Standard Model, quarks and leptons have "Yukawa couplings" to the Higgs boson. These determine the mass of the particle. All of the quarks' and leptons' Yukawa couplings are small compared to the top quark's Yukawa coupling. Yukawa couplings are not constants and their properties change depending on the energy scale at which they are measured, this is known as running of the constants. ... This is known as a (quasi-infrared) fixed point of the renormalization group equation for the Yukawa coupling. No matter what the initial starting value of the coupling is, if it is sufficiently large it will reach this fixed point value, and the corresponding quark mass is predicted.
The value of the fixed point is fairly precisely determined in the Standard Model, leading to a predicted top quark mass of 230 GeV. If there is more than one Higgs doublet, the value will be reduced by Higgs mixing angle effects. The observed top quark mass is slightly lower, about 171 GeV."
All standard model fields (including Higgs field) originated from the decay of more primitive inflaton fields, (which are responsible for inflation of our universe), effective at GUT scale.
The Higgs models predate inflation models by about 15 years.
@Raktim
Can you please post a reference to this statement. Please
do not give a very technical reference. A review for non experts
will be quite helpful to me.
Your point is relatively unknown to the students of particle
physics. How low energy scalars fields,
vector fields and fermions originated from the primordial
inflaton. What is a popular mechanism ? Suppose
the primordial inflaton decays to particle antiparticle pairs
then how can you explain matter-antimatter asymmetry ?
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