Dear Christopher,
It's not quite true to say that the Higgs field does not interact with the electromagnetic field, otherwise the decay of the Higgs boson to two photons, one of the primary discovery channels at the LHC, would be impossible. Similarly, the Higgs boson can be produced through purely gluonic interactions as well, the main production mode at the LHC. In both cases, the interaction is such that the photons and gluons don't acquire mass, but that doesn't mean they can't interact.
It was SR that effectively buried ether, although Einstein later tried to resuscitate it (apparently for sentimental reasons) - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luminiferous_aether#End_of_aether.3F.
However, it seems that it's still not completely dead - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aether_theories.
Well, I see at least two differences:
- The aether was considered to be at rest in a specific frame of reference, also called the preferred frame of reference. Measurements of the earth's speed against the assumed aether (in particular the famous Michelson-Morley experiment) giving a null result was the main reason for the development of Special Relativity. The Higgs field, on the other hand, is a Lorentz scalar field, and as such does not lead to a preferred frame of reference.
- The aether was considered to be the medium in which electromagnetic waves propagate, that is, the electromagnetic field was considered to be a property of the aether. The Higgs field, on the other hand, is a completely separate field which does not even interact with the electromagnetic field (if it would, the photon would have mass).
Dear Christopher,
It's not quite true to say that the Higgs field does not interact with the electromagnetic field, otherwise the decay of the Higgs boson to two photons, one of the primary discovery channels at the LHC, would be impossible. Similarly, the Higgs boson can be produced through purely gluonic interactions as well, the main production mode at the LHC. In both cases, the interaction is such that the photons and gluons don't acquire mass, but that doesn't mean they can't interact.
LHC collisions don't actually demonstrate the process of particles acquiring mass, do they? Don't they actually demonstrate the disintegration of bound, compound particle mass fields?
While the consensus interpretation of the Higgs mechanism is that particles must continuously interact with an ambient Higgs field in order to reacquire their characteristic rest mass, how can component quarks, persistently bound within nucleons, for example, be continuously interacting with an ambient Higgs field without becoming unbound? In fact, most material mass is the product of strong interaction confinement of quark kinetic energy - seemingly requiring that quarks continuously remain bound within the nucleon structure.
It seems to me that what is certainly demonstrated by LHC proton collisions is the disintegration of nucleon binding energy and the release of confined quark kinetic energy - not necessarily any quark disintegration or decay and release of its persistent rest mass.
A mass mediating boson would be predicted by any theory of mass acquisition that is consistent with the standard model - IMO its observation has not confirmed the entire Higgs model of mass acquisition. I suspect that particle rest mass is persistently configured as particles are initially condensed or emitted...
Dear James,
Nearly every particle theorist I know would love to see evidence for anything other than the standard model Higgs mechanism in the LHC data. But, sadly, all the evidence so far points to the standard model as the most likely scenario. In particular, the coupling strengths of the Higgs boson to matter fields are lining up to be consistent with the Higgs mechanism. If it weren't the Higgs mechanism at play and the Higgs boson was just some new scalar particle, there's no reason these couplings would take precisely these values. Granted, the error bars are still a bit big and that gives some hope that the next run of the LHC will discover some small deviation currently hidden by the large error bars. But, it seems just as likely the error bars will shrink and the standard model predictions confirmed.
As to your particular speculations about nucleon binding energy, we already know that QCD interactions participate in electroweak symmetry breaking and the Higgs mechanism but those effects only contribute of order one percent to the mass of the W and Z bosons. Personally, I'd love it if there were some new strong force responsible for the rest but for now all the evidence points to a simple standard model Higgs field.
Dear George,
Thanks for your consideration - I'm obviously not a particle physicist.
How can quarks be continuously reacquiring their characteristic rest mass from an ambient Higgs field while persistently bound within the confines of nucleons' structure by the strong interaction? Isn't this process fundamental to the the current conception of the Higgs mechanism?
I'm not suggesting that there is/was no Higgs field - but that fundamental particles' characteristic rest mass is determined when it is emitted, and that it persists as long as the particle exists.
Dear George,
The Higgs decay into two photons is a higher order process which goes through virtual quarks. Of course in higher order processes everything interacts with everything (or rather, something which would not do so would be completely undetectable, since we only can detect it through such interactions). For example, the Neutrino, which is well-known to only interact with the weak force, certainly also interacts with the electromagnetic field through higher order processes (e.g. it may turn into a virtual electron-W pair, and then either the electron or the W may interact with photons). Similarly, with higher order processes, photons and gluons can interact, via virtual quark-antiquark pairs. And this in turn means that even the electron takes part in the strong interaction, if you only consider sufficient high order.
You often hear statements like "unlike photons, gluons interact with each other". From which I conclude that "does interact", if not explicitly specified otherwise, means "does directly interact" (of course there are higher order photon-photon interactions). Which is IMHO also the only way the statement can carry significant information, because otherwise "does not interact" can never be true for observable particles/fields.
But then, I'm no particle physicist, so I admit I may be wrong about the common use of the language (I think there's no disagreement about the actual facts here). Anyway, a higher order interaction of the fields is still very unlike the quite direct way aether and electromagnetic fields were considered to be connected.
Aether and Higgs field are different entities altogether. Aether is a medium, which we can say is the quantum vacuum and Higgs is a quantum field that exists in this quantum vacuum, which is the home of hundreds of such quantum fields.
- At first people assumed that light acted like a wave, they reasoned that there was some medium which the light was a wave perturbation on. This was a fairly reasonable assumption at the time, as all known waves at the time occurred in some medium. They called this medium for electrodynamics the aether. As with sound in air or ocean waves on the water, the relevant speed is the speed with respect to the medium. So they thought that the speed of light (or maxwell's equations in general) were only true in one coordinate system ... the "aether frame" in which the aether is at reast. Experiment later showed that such an aether did not exist . So the aether is now a defunct topic accept for certain gravity theories that try to add in a dynamic background field that breaks lorentz invariance... but these are not mainstream.
- In the other hand, Higgs field is completely relativistic, so does not provide any preferred frame / lorentz breaking effects either.
Also Higgs Field is Lorentz invariant, meaning they can accomodate special relativity theory. While "aether" is Galilean invariant, and can't accomodate relativity theory.
Both Ether and Higgs field are hypothetical field with hypothetical differences and have no experimental proof of existence. The field that really exists and is within the reach of experiential proof is completely ignored by the scientists. This field is completely motionless and does not interact with other fields in motion. When this motionless field begins to move or vibrate, it gives birth to energy which make up all other fields in motion. I call this field the unmanifest because it is not manifest to the human senses.
I think quantum vacuum can be thought of as something like aether not just the Higgs.
Dear Vikram Zaveri, can you please give us the link of your works on this "Unmanifest", well none of the fields are accessible by human senses but you must have the maths at least, please share.
Source: http://www.independent.com/news/2012/jul/20/higgs-field-new-ether/
Frank Wilczek, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist at MIT, writes in his 2008 book The Lightness of Being: Mass, Ether and the Unification of Forces:
“No presently known form of matter has the right properties [to play the role of the ether]. So we don’t really know what this new material ether is. We know its name: the Higgs condensate [or Higgs field], after Peter Higgs, a Scots physicist who pioneered some of these ideas. The simplest possibility … is that it’s made from one new particle, the so-called Higgs particle. But the [ether] could be a mixture of several materials. … [T]here are good reasons to suspect that a whole new world of particles is ripe for discovery, and that several of them chip in to the cosmic superconductor, a.k.a the Higgs condensate.”
...
Lorentz argued throughout his career that some notion of the ether was necessary for a valid description of reality. Einstein conceded eventually that indeed a non-material ether was necessary to explain inertia and acceleration. Einstein first described his “new ether” in a 1916 letter to Lorentz:
“I agree with you that the general theory of relativity is closer to the ether hypothesis than the special theory. This new ether theory, however, would not violate the principle of relativity, because the state of this … ether would not be that of a rigid body in an independent state of motion, but every state of motion would be a function of position determined by material processes.”
Einstein also wrote in a 1919 letter to Lorentz:
“It would have been more correct if I had limited myself, in my earlier publications, to emphasizing only the non-existence of an ether velocity, instead of arguing the total non-existence of the ether, for I can see that with the word ether we say nothing else than that space has to be viewed as a carrier of physical qualities.”
...
In 1920, Einstein became more emphatic regarding the ether, recognizing explicitly that the ether was a necessary medium by which acceleration and rotation may be judged, independently of any particular frame of reference:
“To deny ether is ultimately to assume that empty space has no physical qualities whatever. The fundamental facts of mechanics do not harmonize with this view… Besides observable objects, another thing, which is not perceptible, must be looked upon as real, to enable acceleration or rotation to be looked upon as something real … The conception of the ether has again acquired an intelligible content, although this content differs widely from that of the ether of the mechanical wave theory of light … According to the general theory of relativity, space is endowed with physical qualities; in this sense, there exists an ether. Space without ether is unthinkable; for in such space there not only would be no propagation of light, but also no possibility of existence for standards of space and time (measuring- rods and clocks), nor therefore any spacetime intervals in the physical sense.”
Einstein special and general theories and their postulates and mathematical formalisms depended intrinsically on the idea of "absolute relativity" between two frames of reference as well as on the complete absence of the absolute frame of reference or the absolute medium existence. Therefore, with the Higgs field being confirmed through the Higgs boson experimental discovery, then the absolute frame of reference exists, and the Higgs field is part of it, this is if the Higgs field is not it itself, despite that the Higgs field structure and interaction with EW propagation is not yet established. The terms "field" and "medium" are interchangeable in the consideration of the aether as an absolute frame of reference.
In fact, the term "field" was invented to describe effects propagating through free space, while "free" space turned out to be non-free, as the Higgs field is everywhere in the universe.
The 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to two of the theorists who formulated the Higgs mechanism, which gives mass to fundamental particles.
https://physics.aps.org/articles/v6/111
According to SR and GR postulate, a tiny electron traveling in some direction with whatsoever constant or accelerating velocity means (according to Einstein's relativity) that the universe edges are "forced" to move in the opposite direction in order to maintain the false principle of equivalent absolute "relativity" postulate, which is completely false and should be null with the Higgs field rising recently, as the Higgs field alone can be considered as the absolute reference of frame. In fact it is the field that gives a meaning to "Mass", and without mass the SR and GR can not proceed.
If additional field is included in Maxwell equations, a drag-like force will appear in Lorentz force that mimics a frictional force opposing the particle motion (inertia). This can be seen in the paper Preprint Dual quantum mechanics and its electromagnetic analog
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