What if electro-weak symmetry is broken at all energies?

In summary: It is a bit as Gulliver histories. Was Gulliver a giant or a dwarf?In summary, at high energy levels, the electroweak force is seen as a short range interaction.
  • #1
ensabah6
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The common understanding is that below around 250Gev the weak force gauge bosons have mass and appear distinct from the electromagnetic force, with its massless photons. And that to explain this required hypothesizing the Higgs field, which acts like a superconducting field, in the vaccuum, which gives W Z bosons mass, and other particles mass, but leaves photons massless. Above this energy, there is only E-W unified field. Since the Higgs field is unstable to radiative corrections, SUSY is conjected to solve this.

The LHC may or may not find Higgs. If Higgs is ruled out,

What would be the ramifications to HEP if EW is broken at all energies up to the GUT 10"15 GEV or even Planck scale?
What would be an alternative explanation if LHC/Tev rules out Higgs experimentally?
 
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  • #3
Really, an explanation of the plot from HERA could be helpful. I guess that CC stands for chiral current and EC for electromagnetic current, is it? In any case, what is relevant of the plot is that it implies a finite, known. mass for the W particle. Most important, we have direct observation of W and Z. So it this sense, unification at high energy is obvious, and I think we are misunderstanding the question of the original poster.

The question about a hypothetical mass of W and Z equal to Planck Scale, nor about a running such that the masses of these particle increase with the energy scale. Such points are ruled out by experiment, as you say. I believe that the question is only about alternatives to the Higgs mechanism.
 
  • #4
So what are the physics of the electroweak force above 250GEV? Is it short range or infinite range?
 
  • #5
ensabah6 said:
So what are the physics of the electroweak force above 250GEV? Is it short range or infinite range?

If you review your question you will see it is tautological. Only the low energy physics is infinite range. In a normal situation, the range of an interaction should be of the scale of the involved scales of energy. What was anomalous is that in the weak disintegration at low energy the range was short, that automatically implies the existence of a scale of the same order that the range.

Think of the pion. The short range of nuclear force was to imply a scale of about 100 MeV, and this come to predict the existence of the pion.

Same with the W.

What happens with an interaction of, say, 10000000 GeV, is that the maths will be unable to notice the other scale, which is only 90 GeV. So at such scale, it will be the same math that having a W of 9 GeV, 0.9 GeV or 0.00009 GeV. In this sense the W at high energy is seen as a long range interaction *because the energy scale of the whole interaction is very very very very short range*.

It is a bit as Gulliver histories. Was Gulliver a giant or a dwarf?
 

1. What is electro-weak symmetry?

Electro-weak symmetry is a fundamental principle in particle physics that describes the relationship between the electromagnetic and weak nuclear forces. It suggests that at high energies, these two forces are unified and appear as a single force, but at lower energies, they become distinct forces.

2. How do we know if electro-weak symmetry is broken?

The existence of electro-weak symmetry breaking was first proposed by physicists Peter Higgs, Robert Brout, and François Englert in the 1960s. It has since been confirmed by experiments at the Large Hadron Collider, which discovered the Higgs boson, a particle that is responsible for giving mass to other particles through the Higgs mechanism.

3. What would happen if electro-weak symmetry is broken at all energies?

If electro-weak symmetry is broken at all energies, it would mean that the electromagnetic and weak forces are no longer unified, and they would behave differently at high and low energies. This could have significant implications for our understanding of the fundamental forces of nature and the structure of the universe.

4. What is the significance of electro-weak symmetry breaking?

Electro-weak symmetry breaking is a crucial concept in the Standard Model of particle physics, which describes the fundamental particles and their interactions. It is also important in our understanding of the early universe and the processes that took place shortly after the Big Bang. Without electro-weak symmetry breaking, the universe as we know it would not exist.

5. Can electro-weak symmetry be restored at extremely high energies?

There is no definitive answer to this question, as it is still an area of active research. However, some theories, such as supersymmetry, suggest that at extremely high energies, electro-weak symmetry may be restored, and the electromagnetic and weak forces would once again appear as a single force. More experiments and observations are needed to confirm or refute this possibility.

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