Higgs mechanism Definition and 42 Threads

According to Leonard Susskind, i.e. the electron has periodically interactions with the Higgs field condensate, that change the electron alternately to be right-handed an left-handed. At 44:20 in the video he says, that, according to the Dirac theory, the mass of the electron is proportional to...

Here's my current understanding of mass terms. For scalar fields, a mass term flows under RG to larger values in the IR. This implies having mass values in the theory is unnatural because it has to be fine tuned at the UV level to get the correct observed mass at low energy (the term I think...

Quote from cern: "Just after the big bang, the Higgs field was zero, but as the universe cooled and the temperature fell below a critical value, the field grew spontaneously so that any particle interacting with it acquired a mass." Can it go back to zero? If anyone has a comment either way...

Phlogiston lead to the discovery of oxygen but was later on proven to be imaginary. Can the same be said of the quite strange Higgs field and Higgs mechanism following from the strange Mexican hat potential? Is that potential just imaginary? It lead to the discovery of the eponimous particle...

Hey there, I was looking at the Higgs sector of the standard model, particularly its coupling to the fermions: ##\mathscr{L}_{ yukawa }=-\sum _{ a,b=1 }^{ 3 }{ \left( { Y }_{ ab }^{ u }{ \bar { Q } }_{ a }{ \hat { \varepsilon } }_{ 2 }{ H }^{ \dagger }{ u }_{ b }+{ Y }_{ ab }^{ d }{ \bar { Q }...

Take the first family of fundamental fermions, u, d, e-, and ν. The u and d are more massive than the e- and the e- is more massive than the ν. The u and d interact via 4 forces, the e- interacts via 3 forces, and the ν interacts via 2 forces. The fermions that interact via the most forces are...

Dear @ll, the central point (for the unitary gauge) in the higgs-mechanism is the equality Φ = (v + η + iξ) = (v + η)ei(ξ/v) (see for example Halzen, Martin: Quarks and Leptons, eq. 14.56) Φ = complex scalar Field v = vacuum that breaks the symmetry spontaneously η,ξ = shifted...

Specifically this one: I've been asking several question's about the weak force to my professors, and both on here and PhysicsSE and it seems impossible to get a consistent answer as to what weak hypercharge, weak isospin actually are with any degree of physical-ity. So I suppose this thread...

There is something that perflexed me. First here are the references to my questions: http://www.latticeguy.net/mypubs/pub017.pdf http://bose.res.in/~bossar/chandu.pdf What I'd like to know is the following: Without superstrings. Quark confinement and asymptotic freedom says as you pull the...

I'm familiar with the Higgs mechanism.. but what perplexed me so much is the temperature dependence. I know about superconductivity or magnetic-temperature analogy.. or generally I understand what's written in wiki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higgs_mechanism "Below some extremely high...

The part I understand: I understand that the spontaneous symmetry breaking of the Higgs produces the 'Mexican hat' potential, with two non-zero stable equilibria. I understand that as the Higgs is a complex field, there exists a phase component of the field. Under gauge transformations of...

I asked this question to PhysicsStackExchange too but to no avail so far. I'm trying to understand the way that the Higgs Mechanism is applied in the context of a U(1) symmetry breaking scenario, meaning that I have a Higgs complex field \phi=e^{i\xi}\frac{\left(\rho+v\right)}{\sqrt{2}} and...

I am confused about how the gauge boson W+ and W- get their charge under spontaneous symmetry breaking in the Higgs mechanism. Here's what I have so far: The covariant derivative for a SU(2)⊗U(1) is DμΦ = (∂μ + igWμiσi/2 + ig'Bμ)Φ where g and g' are coupling constants. SU(2) is associated...

I understand that Higgs mechanism “gives” mass to particles in QM sense. My first question is, why it also gives mass in GR sense, bending space-time? Of course, I don’t expect an answer now as it is definitely a TOE/Quantum gravity territory. However, let me rephrase my question in a narrower...

I am not well versed in the idea of Higgs mechanism. However, I was wondering if it does explain the problem of equivalence of gravitational and inertial mass. Also, what is the modern accepted definition of mass?

I'm just looking for a layman's explanation of why the efforts to confirm Higgs was truly necessary and worth the expense. The counter-argument is that theoretical physics seem to be going along just fine assuming something like the Higgs mechanism existed without validating it. Also, nothing...

I was wondering if there are any theories that show how much mass the higgs field gives to each particle and why? I am specifically wondering about the observed masses for each particles rest mass. Does the higgs mechanism give mass in quanta, and if so is there a reason for the amounts?

Hi all, Having looked into the Higgs mechanism a bit (I am a physics undergrad, so my understanding is pretty basic if even correct), I have come up with a question. I understand that the way that the Higgs field gives mass to the W and Z bosons is different to the way that it gives leptons...

If seems to me that the conditions in the early universe which led to the activation of the Higgs field might be found inside a black hole, but in reverse. This might explain the mystery of infinite density inside a black hole, uniting Gen Rel and QM. Might a black hole then be a baby universe...

I'm not sure this thread belongs in this forum since we have now discovered a Higgs like boson. But I'm trying to get a better understanding of how the Higgs mechanism works. Let me share what I think I know, and you tell me how far off I am. Particles gain mass as they travel through the...

Does the shape of the Higgs potential change if the energy of the vacuum changes? According to Wikipedia, If a more stable vacuum state were able to arise, then existing particles and forces would no longer arise as they presently do. Different particles or forces would arise from (and be...

Hi can anyone explain what a quadratic divergence is? and if so how it effects the mass of the scalar field i.e why m^2 = m^2_{0} + \delta m^2, why are these things squared? Also how would this divergence affect the standard model as a natural concept, because from reading books it would...

what is "q" (the charge) in higgs mechanism? hi, does anybody know what kind of charge the "q" stand for in the higgs mechanism? I mean the mechanism between the weak force mediators: W & Z, and the higgs boson, which leads to them acquiring mass. I've learned about it from the...

Theorem unifies superfluids and other weird materials http://newscenter.berkeley.edu/2012/06/08/theorem-unifies-superfluids-and-other-weird-materials/ Nambu Goldstone bosons...of the Higgs Mechanism!..and phonons...from Cosmology to materials design. “Surprisingly, the implications of...

Hi, As I understand, please correct me if I'm wrong, when a subatomic particle interacts with the Higgs field it generates mass due to the higgs mechanism. Does this have anything to do with with e = mc2? (I'm not too privy to particle physics or relativity.) Suppose an electron and a...

The Higgs mechanism is often explained (both here at PF and in many physics sites including wikipedia) as an example of spontaneous symmetry breaking, but the Nobel winner physicist 't Hooft says in his "for laymen" book about particle physics, "In search of the ultimate building blocks", that...

The Higgs mechanism and the Beginning of the Universe Now that the excitement about the discovery of the Higgs particle has made the Higgs mechanism justly famous, could someone please clarify for me the implications of incorporating this component of the Standard Model of Particle Physics...

I understand that an electron gets its mass by self-interaction of its fields which is explained by QED, but on the other hand there is the higgs mechanism which gives mass to all the fundamental particles. Does the electron have two types of mass one which is due to the QED mechanism and the...

I am led to believe that while the Higgs Mechanism is now almost certainly the explanation for mass, it gives no insight whatsoever into gravity. I really really hope that I am incorrect. There's got to be some speculation out there. What do the boson and the field have to do with gravity...

After having read a number of articles about the potential discovery of the Higgs boson at CERN, I am wondering how the "mass effect" generation by the Higgs mechanism can coexist with gravitation as gravitation has been since Newton tightly coupled with the concept of mass. I develop below...

I might misunderstand the higgs mechanism. And I have a puzzle. Consider an electron in an accelerater. It is massive at low energy and its speed is something lower than the speed of light. However when it is accelerated to the electroweak scale, su(2) becomes unbroken and the electron turns...

Our universe apparently has a positive cosmological constant so it will look more and more like de Sitter spacetime, expanding at at exponentially increasing rate. So eventually it seems that subatomic spacetime would be affected by this. Eventually even something a Planck distance away would...

"Although the evidence for the Higgs mechanism is overwhelming," As far as I know there is no evidence for the Higgs mechanism. The only potential evidence is the Higgs particle which has not been found! Is this also SM propaganda?

"The Higgs mechanism in the standard model successfully predicts the mass of the W±, and Z weak gauge bosons," How does the higgs mechanism predict the masses of the W & Z? The Higgs has no specific coupling value to any particle and it is the coupling value that gives the mass value Is...

I need help understanding the Higgs mechanism: what is the Higgs condensate, what is the Higgs boson, why do only the W and Z bosons have mass, and how exactly do particles receive mass? thanks guys!

There is an aspect of the Higgs mechanism I am troubled about. This applies to any theory with Higgs, but for sake of definiteness I will restrict the discussion to the Standard Model. The (unbroken) theory starts with a complex Higgs doublet, which corresponds to four degrees of freedom...

I'm an undergraduate in physics, I'm on my 2nd year. I have to write this assignment about the Higgs particle and gauge theory. There are quite some things that are unclear to me however. Since I'm only on my second year I don't know a lot of deep math like group theory, just basic stuff. I know...

Non-Higgs boson process of the generating of elementary particle masses in QFT As is known in the experiments on LEP and Bevatron, Higgs's bosons were not discovered. It is supposed that an energy amount bigger than 160 GeV is here needed. But some scientists doubt the detection of Higgs in...

Hi there Lately, I have been irritated by some general articles about the Higgs Mechanism in newspapers. Those articles suggest that it gives mass to all particles (vector bosons + all fermions). However, if I read a textbook I can only extract from the context that it gives mass only to the...

Forgive if I'm being sarcastic, but I just read on the Higgs mechanism, giving mass to the fermions and bosons. But at the same time, Higgs itself has mass? Isn't that abit irony?

Let me take an example. Suppose we have a Lagrangian, of a scalar field coupled to itself and a massless gauge boson field. Next, we expand the Lagrangian about the vacuum expectation value of the scalar field, and it turns out that, in the end, the gauge boson is massive. My question is...

Are there any other mechanisms apart from Higgs mechanism that explains the spontaneous symmetry breaking making photon massless and W and Z bosons massive? Do you really believe in the Higgs mechanism?