As I understand, the Higgs mechanism is thought to impart rest mass to elementary particles only, mediated by the Higgs boson. However, I have to point out that any proposed mechanism that imparts rest mass to elementary particles that is consistent with the standard theory would necessarily require the existence of a mediating particle - the Higgs boson. IMO, the detection of a Higgs boson particle does not prove that the proposed Higgs mechanism is correct...

While the Higgs boson likely involved in the mediation of elementary particle rest mass, that only represents a tiny fraction of the gravitational mass of atomic matter. See http://cds.cern.ch/journal/CERNBulletin/2012/06/News%20Articles/1420890?ln=en

"Interactions with the Higgs field are not just reserved for force-carrying particles. The theory can also explain how all other fundamental particles acquire their rest mass. But don’t make the mistake of thinking the Higgs field is responsible for all mass. Interaction with the field actually contributes less than 1 kg to the mass of an average person 2). Your remaining mass comes from the energy of the various forces holding your bodies together – mainly the strong force binding quarks inside nucleons, with a tiny contribution from the electromagnetic force that reigns over the atomic scale."

As I understand then, the vast majority of the Earth's gravitational mass, for example, is actually considered to be the product of nucleons' confinement of quark kinetic (propagation) energy by the strong force - mediated by gluons.

If I understand correctly, the Higgs mechanism specifies that elementary particles must continuously interact with an ambient Higgs field filling all spacetime to reacquire and maintain their inherent rest mass. This seems to be questionable on several grounds. First, It seems rather unlikely that bound components of compound particles, such as quarks, could somehow directly interact with any field permeating spacetime. Second, it would seem then that Higgs bosons should also permeate all spacetime in order to impart mass to all fundamental particles - yet they only appear when nucleons are disintegrated at exceedingly high energies. Lastly, this mechanism has never explained how or why different fundamental particles acquire different rest masses!

I suggest an alternative, yet similar mechanism, in which particles permanently acquire their characteristic rest masses as they are emitted. As a result, the common constituent component particles of atomic matter, bound quarks and electrons are exceedingly stable - they acquired their inherent rest mass when the were emitted in the early universe - from the then ambient density of the Higgs field. In this case, particle rest mass represents the condensed ancient density of the the Higgs field then filling spacetime!

More recently, most newly emitted particles have little mass - as the ambient density of the Higgs field is now relatively low. In the cases of decay, disintegration, etc. of particles emitted long ago, their massive, locally condensed Higgs field is released, allowing the local emission of (unstable) massive particles.

This conceptual mechanism seems much simpler and better explains how and why various particles have distinct characteristic rest masses.

Back to gravitation, it does not seem to me that the Higgs boson could be directly involved in any gravitational interaction - again, in this case they should be easily found permeating space. Moreover, I must take exception with the referenced Stojkovic paper, which stated "... Since gravity couples anything with mass to anything with mass..." IMO GTR does not describe a 'coupling' between objects of mass that might be mediated by some particle (a proposed graviton - not Higgs boson), but by what I take to be an interaction between the potential energy of condensed mass and a kinetic vacuum energy. Unlike Newtonian gravity, in GTR there is no direct binding between condensed masses. This seems to be a particular issue for those who are motivated to fit gravity within the structure of quantum field theory, which essentially describes exchanges of material forces among particles. If, as I suspect, gravitational interactions involve vacuum energy densities corresponding to spacetime dimensional coordinates, I think that gravity cannot be easily fit within the existing structure of QFT.

As John Wheeler said in "Geons, Black Holes, and Quantum Foam", "Spacetime tells matter how to move; matter tells spacetime how to curve..."

Thank you

BTW, there are > 400 disparate comments posted to the somewhat similar question: https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_could_the_discovery_of_the_Higgs_Boson_contribute_to_our_understanding_of_gravity12.

It is unclear that how Higgs boson is related to gravity. But let me

explain how is it related to unification of electromagnetic, and weak

forces.

These theories are based on certain symmetries of the Lagrangian.

That is the Lagrangian remains unchanged by changes in phases

of relevant fields, even if these phases depend on the particular point

in space time where the observer is located.

Problem comes when massive fields are introduced. Including

mass terms explicitly in the Lagrangian destroy (local) gauge in

variance.

Next possibility is to introduce a Hypothetical "Higgs" particle which

"interacts" with known ones. If mass term is introduced by

spontaneously breaking Higgs part of the Lagrangian then, via

the interactions of Higgs particle known particles can be made

massive without spoiling certain nice features of the theory namely

renormalizibility.

However this Hypothetical particle must be searched in accelerators

to see indeed they exist or not. Now we know that indeed Higgs

particle existis and its mass is about 125-126 GeVs. So at this

point of time this assumption is not needed.

Luis:

First, permit me to make a 'positive' response.

I may have found a way to catalog known and possible elementary particles - including spins, some masses, some interaction properties, numbers of generations (for fermions), and symmetries related to the Poincare group (and hence to special relativity).  (The method is based on matching solutions for paired isotropic quantum harmonic oscillators to actual or candidate particles.  For the method and results, see part 2 of the attachment.)

To the extent this catalog (or something like it) correlates with nature, the Higgs boson, photon, graviton, weak interaction bosons, and strong interaction elementary bosons fit within a unified framework.  The framework encompasses yet other forces.

Now, a 'negative' response.

Perhaps (regarding traditional approaches) people should be cautious with statements that correlate existence of the Higgs boson or a Higgs field with some particles' having non-zero mass.  Perhaps people should consider (at least philosophically) that a theory should include either [a] both gravity and something about mass or [b] neither gravity nor a 'source of mass.'

And, a possibly 'positive' follow on to the 'negative response.'

Perhaps, my work provides a path by which people can 'add' both gravity and something related to mass to an expanded version of the Standard Model.  (Part 5 of the book)

I hope this comment proves of some use.  I welcomes feedback and discussion.

Book Theory of Particles plus the Cosmos: Small Things and Vast E...