What is Boson: Definition and 371 Discussions

In quantum mechanics, a boson (, ) is a particle that follows Bose–Einstein statistics. Bosons make up one of two classes of elementary particles, the other being fermions. The name boson was coined by Paul Dirac to commemorate the contribution of Satyendra Nath Bose, an Indian physicist and professor of physics at University of Calcutta and at University of Dhaka in developing, with Albert Einstein, Bose–Einstein statistics, which theorizes the characteristics of elementary particles.Examples of bosons are fundamental particles such as photons, gluons, and W and Z bosons (the four force-carrying gauge bosons of the Standard Model), the recently discovered Higgs boson, and the hypothetical graviton of quantum gravity. Some composite particles are also bosons, such as mesons and stable nuclei of even mass number such as deuterium (with one proton and one neutron, atomic mass number = 2), helium-4, and lead-208; as well as some quasiparticles (e.g. Cooper pairs, plasmons, and phonons).An important characteristic of bosons is that there is no restriction on the number of them that occupy the same quantum state. This property is exemplified by helium-4 when it is cooled to become a superfluid. Unlike bosons, two identical fermions cannot occupy the same quantum state. Whereas the elementary particles that make up matter (i.e. leptons and quarks) are fermions, the elementary bosons are force carriers that function as the 'glue' holding matter together. This property holds for all particles with integer spin (s = 0, 1, 2, etc.) as a consequence of the spin–statistics theorem.
When a gas of Bose particles is cooled down to temperatures very close to absolute zero, then the kinetic energy of the particles decreases to a negligible amount, and they condense into the lowest energy level state. This state is called a Bose–Einstein condensate. This property is also the explanation for superfluidity.

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  1. J

    Higgs Boson and Supersymmetry?

    Can someone explain to me in layman's terms why the Higgs Boson needs to be less than 130 GeV to prove Supersymmetry exists?
  2. 2

    Where does higgs boson get its mass?

    Does it interact with other higgs bosons? Do they also do the same? It cannot go ad infinitum or can it?
  3. L

    If the Boson Higgs Boson only exists for >.< long

    If the Boson Higgs Boson, only exists for a millionth, of a millionth, of a millionth, of a millionth of a millionth, of a millionth, of a millionth, of a second - or even lessera... And all matter has mass because of it... According to my wall clock, this means that several billion...
  4. J

    Could the Higgs boson have been discovered with earlier accelerators?

    Could the Higgs boson have been confirmed with earlier accelerators? The LEP collider operated at a maximum of 209 GeV. Could it have been used to confirm the existence of the 125.3 GeV Higgs boson? I also read on Wikipedia that the CERN teams were apparently examining the 145–466 GeV range...
  5. fluidistic

    Concept of boson and fermion applied to atoms and more

    Sometime I read that the helium atoms can be considered as boson, but I don't understand why. I know that its nucleous has a spin of 2 (integer) and that its 2 electrons gives the atom a total spin of 3, an integer. But then why isn't hydrogen considered also as a boson? I think it's considered...
  6. A

    Can someone explain the significance of the Higgs boson?

    Hey guys, Being interested in science (and living in Switzerland), I've been reading a lot about the Higgs boson in mainstream news. Unfortunately, the best thing I can get out of that kind of report is the overused analogy of some celebrity moving in a crowd. I have practically no...
  7. R

    Spin of Particles Detected at LHC: Higgs Boson and Supersymmetry

    I tried searching through but didn't find this asked. If the spin of the particle detected at LHC comes back as 2, for instance, does it mean it's not a higgs boson? There are 5 higgs in supersymmetry, do they all have spin 0?
  8. G

    Dark Matter/Higgs Boson questions

    I've been reading physics articles for the past few years (after taking a physics course in high school), and a few questions have been daunting me, especially in light of a few new discoveries. I will try and cite any sources I can to back up the premises for my questions. I'll start with...
  9. M

    Did a Higgs Boson trigger the big bang?

    Michio Kaku (see link) says that the Higgs Boson is the reason for the Big Bang. Is that true? I am not initiated enough in cosmology to know if I believe that a Higgs Boson triggered the Big Bang. Thanks...
  10. N

    Electromagnetism & Higgs Boson

    I want to get caught up in this discovery and of course it would more "legitimate" if I better understood what the standard model is.So I'll ask some slightly random "Yes/No" questions. Are the "Gauge Bosons/Force Carriers" that have mass "supposed to be" mass-less? But from...
  11. R

    Scalar Boson and Quantum Non-locality

    It's impossible that the higgs boson was the only scalar boson in nature. Could quantum-nonlocality be mediated by scalar boson or connected with scalar field? How do you discount or refute this?
  12. D

    Can the Higgs Boson Help Solve the Mystery of Neutrino Mass?

    In reading through all the info that is coming out from today's big announcement, it seems as they still can't peg the mass of the higgs boson as much of their data comes in the form of decay paths that include neutrinos of unknown mass. My question is whether when they peg the exact mass of...
  13. K

    How can the Higgs Boson have a mass?

    How can the Higgs Boson have a mass if it's what determines mass? Do we have any insight to why its mass is very large?
  14. C

    Does the discovery of the Higgs Boson disprove String Theory?

    From what I understand, the Higgs Boson was the last missing piece of the Standard Model (12 indivisible particles, 4 forces). Now that the Standard Model is complete, has String Theory been disproved? Is there a conflict between the Standard Model and String Theory?
  15. R

    Does Higgs Boson rule out spacetime curvature?

    Hi there: I've learned that there's no such thing as gravity, just the curvature of spacetime that makes objects that are close to each other act like it existed. Does Higgs Bossom discovery tell us that there is a gravity force after all?
  16. A

    What gives the Higgs boson its mass?

    With the recent experimental evidence that the Higgs boson likely does exist, and that the Higgs field may well be responsible for "giving" mass to all matter, I am curious how we theorize what gives the Higgs particle it's own mass. Warning: I am not a physicist so be gentle :-)
  17. D

    A couple of questions about Higgs Boson

    Hi all, I have a couple of noob questions regarding the Higgs Boson (HB) and it's recent "discovery" 1. if the HB is so heavy (I understood it is heavier than a proton) and permeates the universe, why is it so difficult to detect it or produce it ? 2. Why do we have to collide protons...
  18. J

    Higgs Boson discovered Moment of victory Yay

    News just came out from a press conference, that the "god particle", a.k.a, the Higgs Boson has been affirmatively discovered. Analyzing the results of trillions of high energy collisions that took place in particle accelerators, physicists concluded that the higgs boson particle (or a particle...
  19. Jameson

    MHB Possible announcement of proof Higgs Boson exists

    http://www.wired.com/geekmom/2012/07/higgs-boson-anticipation/ For some reason the Higgs Boson has become famous well beyond those interested in physics. There is a schedule press conference at 9am Geneva at the site of the Large Hadron Collider and it seems that the only discovery warranting...
  20. R

    General Question about Higgs boson

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/jun/29/higgs-boson-rumours-fly-cern-results?newsfeed=true just read this news article and sounds thoroughly exciting. I wanted to know in general exactly gave rise to the idea of the higgs boson imbuing elementary particles with mass. What were the...
  21. P

    .Higgs Boson Decay: Does the Third Diagram Exist?

    Hello, I had a doubt about a specific Higgs boson decay. In the process H -> c+\bar{s}+W^-, where c is the charm quark, \bar{s} the anti strange quark, in tree level I wrote the diagrams sent in attachment. My question is: does the third diagram exist? I do know that the s...
  22. Mordred

    Latest Higgs Boson Rumors Spark Excitement in Scientific Community

    http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/06/latest-higgs-rumors/ been seeing several recent articles regarding this article this is one of the more recent ones thought you all would be intersted in it
  23. A

    Is Higgs boson surely a particle?

    I've been bugged by a question for some time.Everyone talks about the Higgs boson, although no one discovered it yet.My question is how do we know it's a particle?I mean, to me it'd make more sense if it were a wave created at the same time with the Big Bang that gave everything mass or if it...
  24. P

    Free, massless boson propagaor

    Homework Statement Cosider a single, free, massless boson with action S=\int\mathcal{L}=\frac{1}{2\pi}\int\partial X \overline{\partial}X in two dimensions \overline{\partial}X(z,\overline{z}) = \partial_{\overline{z}} X(z,\overline{z}) Show, that the propagator \langle...
  25. C

    So how will CERN's LHC detect a Higgs boson

    So how will CERN's LHC produce a Higgs boson I saw a video where a professor said "So you do it by ... using e=mc^{2} ... you collide some protons at huge energies, so that's giving you energy, and that energy gets converted into the mass of all possible new particles that there can be"...
  26. Darken-Sol

    Whats the deal with the higgs boson?

    from the little info i have found it i gather we are still looking. where can i find more info? google just brings up wiki and some crap from cnn. i don't know much about it, however i would like to. if it gives other particles mass how can we find it in a particle collider? wouldn't it already...
  27. T

    Higg's Boson v. Einstein's warping of Space-Time

    Why does it seem that modern physicists have thrown out Einstein's theory of gravity warping space-time for the idea that the force of gravity is caused by a specific particle? Has Einstein's theory been discredited or is it just simpler for the Unification of the four forces for gravity to be...
  28. A

    Higgs boson and graviton relationship?

    F=GM1M2/r^2 The force of gravity without mass is 0. Wouldn't this imply that gravitons and higgs bosons come in pairs? Is there any evidence of gravitons and higgs bosons existing only in pairs?
  29. S

    Higgs Boson and confidence levels

    What is the current state of things? Are they fairly confident that the Higgs exist despite more data being needed for the 5-sigma confidence level? Could it still (realistically) turn out to not exist?
  30. M

    How can the Higgs Boson induce mass?

    How can the Higgs boson induce mass? How can it interact with itself? Is it the only particle able to do so, if yes, why, and if no, what other particles can interact with themselves? As a side thought, is Young's Double Slit Experiment evidence of particles interacting with themselves (the...
  31. Y

    Is whole Carbon 13 atom (not just the nucleus) a fermion or boson?

    This ought to be simple, I think. But I haven't found a consistent way to think about things yet. Is it as simple as adding up all the spins of the elementary particles in the particle and checking whether the total has inter or half-integer spin? Homework Statement State whether the...
  32. A

    Are boson fields the adjoint of the fermionic field they couple to?

    Dear Physics Forum, I read this on a wikipedia site "Technically, QCD is a gauge theory with SU(3) gauge symmetry. Quarks are introduced as spinor fields in Nf flavors, each in the fundamental representation (triplet, denoted 3) of the color gauge group, SU(3). The gluons are vector fields...
  33. S

    Mass/Energy of W Boson: Where Does it Go?

    From what I understand, which is kind of limited, the neutron (939Mev) decays into a proton (938Mev) giving off a HUGELY massive particle called a W boson (80,000Mev). The W boson exists for 3*10^-25 seconds then gets transformed into an electron (.511Mev) and an electron anti-neutrino (.28ev)...
  34. A

    SU(5) model, gauge boson decay

    I am reading Mukhanov's 'Physical Foundations of Cosmology'. He claims that in the minimal SU(5) model, CP violation of a heavy SU(5) gauge boson X decay arises at the tenth order of perturbation theory. Is that correct? The tenth order perturbation theory would lead to a very complicated...
  35. I

    Create Boson: Know Pion vs Other?

    Suppose a K.G. field. When I apply the creation operator on the vacuum, how do I know it is a pion or any other boson?
  36. W

    The Higgs Mechanism: Explaining the Role of Goldstone Bosons in Mass Generation

    I've been reading this very good new book "The Infinity Puzzle" by Frank Close and it mentioned a lot about the Higgs boson eating the Goldstone Boson to have mass. I already checked out wikipedia but can't get an intuitive feel of it. Can anyone explain in a brief mathematical sense why the...
  37. R

    Is the Higgs boson already discovered?

    Alberto Palma's recent paper Arxiv:1202.0217 says in its conclusions part: "The ATLAS collaboration presents first results of the direct search for the SM Higgs boson decaying to b\bar b. No evidence of the Higgs boson was found in a pp collision data sample of \mathcal L=1.04\ \mathrm f\mathrm...
  38. N

    Why in general speaking the mass of gauge boson is zero?

    Please teach me this: Why in general speaking the mass of gauge boson particle is zero(except W,Z bosons)?Because if we consider the self-energy of the bosons,we might think of the mass of gauge bosons. Thank you very much for your kind helping.
  39. J

    Higgs boson only interacts with accelerating particles?

    What is the fundamental rationale for why particles moving through the Higgs ocean would only interact if they are accelerating?
  40. M

    Higgs boson lifetime and decay length?

    I am trying to figure out how fast the Higgs decays and how far it travels in a detector at the LHC. Figure 2.5 in http://www.hep.lu.se/atlas/thesis/egede/thesis-node14.html gives decay widths of the Higgs as a function of its mass. For a Higgs of 125 GeV, it is 0.002 GeV. Using the...
  41. D

    Does Higgs Boson Discovery Support 4-D Spacetime Model?

    Would the Higgs boson discovery support a 4-D spacetime model?
  42. V

    Regarding Higgs boson and ether model

    Hi all, I have few questions regarding Higgs boson and ether model. I wanted to know :- 1.What if "ether" == Higgs Boson? 2.The experiment done earlier to detect ether around the Earth failed because we don't know how to detect that medium? 3. On the question of "Drag" , Please...
  43. N

    Textbook tries to argue stimulated emission from boson behaviour?

    Hello, "Quantum Mechanics" by Basdevant and Dalibard tries to qualitatively deduce stimulated emission of atoms shined upon with some light by using Bose Einstein statistics. Imagine a certain photon in eigenstate n and if we turn on a potential v temporarily, the chance of it ending up in...
  44. M

    Energy release from Graviton / Higgs Boson

    With so much coverage in the press over the seemingly imminent discovery of the Higgs particle, there's one question that never seems to get raised - which more than likely means I've missed something fundamentally simple; so this may be a very short thread! Higgs Boson / Graviton - it may be...
  45. S

    What is the Higgs Boson and how does it give particles their mass?

    I've recently been told about the higgs boson or "god particle" I've heard it somehow endows particles with their mass, it interacts with the 'larger' (ones with more mass) more than the smaller particles and basically tells them how much mass to have, I am wondering how it does this and also I...
  46. J

    Higgs boson for the uninitiated

    I usually visit this forum as a guest. I am not a physicist but these visits always teach me something and keep me somewhat informed of what goes on in the world of physics. But now I have a question which will probably seem stupid to you all. It is apparent that the Higgs boson plays a most...
  47. epenguin

    Has anyone seen Higgs' Boson recently

    by any chance?
  48. J

    What is the relationship between the Higgs boson and gravity?

    okay, i am totally confused (again). i ihave a general understanding that the higgs mechanism is the effect which gives particles mass. the higgs mechanism is determined by the higgs field and mediated by the higgs boson. is that correct so far? now the HLC indicates that it has somehwat...
  49. R

    Questions, Why, Practical Applications Higgs Boson

    Firstly, an open statement to everyone in this forum. I am in search of some answers to questions I have so that I may have a better understanding of this research. For this reason I have posted this so that through all of you my lack of education or some may refer to ignorance I may be...
  50. S

    News Stories of Possible Imminent Higgs Boson Discovery

    There seem to be a number of news stories coming out about the possibility of an imminent find of the Higgs Boson @ 125-126GeV: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16074411 So what if the elusive Higgs Boson is finally found? Could this somehow enable us to conquer and manipulate...
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