The Higgs boson or Higgs particle is an elementary particle initially theorised in 1964,whose discovery was announced at CERN on 4 July 2012. The discovery confirms the existence of the Higgs field, which is pivotal to the Standard Model and other theories within particle physics. It would explain why some fundamental particles have mass when the symmetries controlling their interactions should require them to be massless, and why the weak force has a much shorter range than the electromagnetic force.
I wonder whether this is a question, or merely a statement of facts. If it is a question, I would refer the interested to what in condensed-matter community is referred to as the Anderson-Higgs mechanism. For this, consult pp. 222-236 of the book Quantum Many Particle Systems, by Negele and Orland. Here both a "free" phi^4 field theory and this field theory coupled minimally to the electromagnetic field are considered. The details clearly show how upon the spontaneous breaking of the U(1) symmetry, the two components of the massless electromagnetic gauge field turn into three massive fields. In the following lecture (with the title "My Life as a Boson"), Peter Higgs gives an account of the theoretical objections that originally were raised against the Higgs mechanism (the objections were rooted in the Godstone theorem and the nature of the Goldstone modes):
http://www.kcl.ac.uk/nms/depts/physics/news/events/MyLifeasaBoson.pdf
Lastly, regarding the Anderson-Higgs mechanism, I warmly recommend to the interested the very interesting paper "Superconductivity for Particular Theorists", by Steven Weinberg (Progress of Theoretical Physics Supplement No. 86, pp. 43-53 (1986)).
The Brout-Englert-Higgs mechanism shows how it is possible to evade the consequences of Goldstone's theorem. However this latter relies on Lorentz invariance to arrive at the existence of a massless particle, with quantum numbers those of the charge that generates the ``spontaneously broken'' symmetry.
This was pointed out by W. Gilbert in a paper,
``Broken Symmetries and Massless Particles'', Phys.\ Rev.\ Lett.\ {\bf 12} (1964) 713.
Indeed Higgs' paper is in answer to this. Gilbert shows that one needs Lorentz invariance in order to conclude that, if a symmetry is ``spontaneously broken'', in a theory with positive definite Hilbert space, there is a massless excitation, with the quantum numbers of the corresponding current. Gilbert's paper isn't as well-known as it should be. It's interesting to point out that he received the Nobel Prize in 1980 in Physiology and Medecine for his work in molecular biology (but his PhD was with Schwinger).
Therefore attempts to apply Goldstone's theorem and the B-E-H mechanism to condensed matter physics can't just evoke them-they must show how they deal with Gilbert's points.
The range of an interaction is determined from the mass of its carriers. Carriers without mass lead to interactions the infinite range. This is the case of electromagnetic interaction whose carrier is the massless photon. On other hand, if the carrier has mass (no equals zero) then its interaction has a range shorter. This is the case of weak interaction, whose carriers are bosons W+, W- and Z^0, all them with mass.
Furthermore, if the graviton exists (the hypothetical carrier of gravitational interaction), this must be massless because the range gravitational interaction is infinite.
@ Cristian Quinzacara: Your response does not touch on the main question of this page, which is about the origin of mass of particles. Your response is about the relationship between range of known forces and the mass of the particles associated with them.
@ Benham Farid: It is the response for the second question.
About the first question: It is the interaction among particles and higgs field what we call mass
In "Periodic quantum gravity and cosmology" theory, the universe begins with some 10^62 massless particles called Savitons (10^19 GeV) in a region of about 10^-14 meter dia sphere. There is no geometrical singularity at the beginning. In the beginning there was only kinetic energy moving at the speed of light. As Savitons collide with each other their velocity drop from c to v and their kinetic energy gets converted into potential energy in the form of mass. This creates whole range of new particles. This is how all particles including Higgs boson acquire their mass.
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Physical Sciences
- Particle Physics