Higgs boson interactions and gravitons

Evert

How is it possible that the Higgs boson interacts with itself?
Now that it is almost certainly discovered, how can a particle that gives mass to other particles, give mass to itself? Does it make a 'loop' with other Higgs bosons?

How can the Higgs boson interact with other particles in such a way that it does not lose its own mass? Or does it?

Must a Higgs boson interact with a particle before a hypothetical graviton can? Or does a graviton acts more like a photon, like a graviton gets released whenever a particle has mass?

Thanks in advance for answering my questions, if any threads have been made already about the same questions, feel free to redirect me to that part of the forum.

jtbell

It's not the Higgs particle that "gives" other particles their masses. It's the Higgs field that does this. They're different things, although related to each other. For starters, see these threads:

http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=658040

http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=655579

You might also try using the forum search feature to search for "Higgs." This confusion comes up over and over again.

K^2

Anything to do with graviton has to be said tongue-in-cheek. Gravity has not been properly quantized. All of the quantizations that yield gravitons do not agree with observation. How a graviton, if it exists, would couple to matter fields remains a mystery.

That said, many particles in QFT self-interact. Some directly, some via other fields. Part of electron's mass is going to be due to electromagnetic interaction with electron-positron pairs that pop in and out of vacuum. Self interaction of Higgs boson is nothing new. It's the norm for elementary particles.

Bill_K

It couples to the not-so-mysterious stress-energy tensor.
Very few types of particles self-interact. Only the Higgs boson and gluons (and presumably the graviton.)
The electron's mass is determined entirely by its interaction with the Higgs field. The electron does not interact with "electron-positron pairs", only with photons, W and Z (and presumably the graviton). Electron-positron pairs do not "pop in and out of vacuum."

K^2

Which would make graviton field the gauge field of coordinate transformations, since stress-energy tensor is the conserved charge of these transformations. I am yet to see anyone manage to successfully demonstrate that these have anything to do with gravity. Other than obviously coupling to stress-energy tensor.

Pardon the slip. I was thinking of self-energy.

Why don't you draw me a few diagrams for electron propagator that are 4th order in g_em. I'd like to see how many you manage before you have to resort to an ep pair.