Does the Higgs Boson Have an Antimatter Counterpart?

[Quds Akbar]

Does the Higgs boson have an antimatter version, and does anything allow it to. If it exists then how does it react with baryonic matter?

 

[Orodruin]

The Higgs is its own antiparticle and so it interacts with baryonic matter just in the same way as the Higgs.

 

[Quds Akbar]

The Higgs is its own antiparticle and so it interacts with baryonic matter just in the same way as the Higgs.

If matter and anti matter meet a humongous amount of energy will be released and so why does this not happen??

 

[Doug Huffman]

With the Higgs boson? It is its own antiparticle. It is unstable and decays in many ways, but particularly to a top and anti-top quark pair, a particle and anti-particle pair.

Between antiparticles, it does happen, but not with a "humongous" release of energy. Annihilation energy is not mysterious as conservation must be observed.

 

[Orodruin]

With the Higgs boson? It is its own antiparticle. It is unstable and decays in many ways, but particularly to a top and anti-top quark pair, a particle and anti-particle pair.

Just to clarify, being its own anti-particle is not the property that makes the Higgs decay. There are several unstable particles which are not their own anti-particles (e.g., muon, tau, etc). Also, the life-time of the Higgs is extremely short, of the order of 10^-22 s. I remember the number of Higgs bosons in the solar system being estimated to around one at any given time in a thread a few months back, mainly created by cosmic rays hitting the Sun. Even if this number is a few order of magnitudes off, it is certainly too few for them to meet and annihilate.

 

[mfb]

If matter and anti matter meet a humongous amount of energy will be released and so why does this not happen??

The maximal amount of energy that can get released is the full energy of the particles. At the LHC, this is large in terms of particle physics, but still tiny for our macroscopic world: the total energy of a proton-proton collision is about 0.000001 J. And 1 J (a million times more) is just enough energy to lift an apple up by 1 meter.

In addition, even single Higgs bosons are rare - the "collision" (better: interaction) of two Higgs bosons is extremely rare. And they do not annihilate in the way regular matter plus antimatter would do, they form other particles.

I remember the number of Higgs bosons in the solar system being estimated to around one at any given time in a thread a few months back, mainly created by cosmic rays hitting the Sun.

Found it (including the following posts), the number 1 was for the whole observable universe.

 

[Quds Akbar]

But I saw a video by Michio Kaku saying that if matter and antimatter collide they could produce a second Big Bang

 

[mfb]

But I saw a video by Michio Kaku saying that if matter and antimatter collide they could produce a second Big Bang

I'm quite sure he did not say that. And if he did, it was wrong.
You can get conditions close to those we had shortly after the big bang, but that is a completely different statement.

 

[Quds Akbar]

I'm quite sure he did not say that. And if he did, it was wrong.
You can get conditions close to those we had shortly after the big bang, but that is a completely different statement.

So what would actually happen, and would it be that extreme?

 

[Doug Huffman]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annihilation

 

[mfb]

That depends on the collision. Examples:

• Low-energetic positrons, annihilating with electrons, produce a pair of photons (gamma rays). This is used in PET scans, where it happens inside the human body. Certainly not a second big bang!
• High-energetic positrons and electrons can produce new particles, including protons, more electrons and various other particles and antiparticles. The antiparticles can react with particles afterwards and annihilate again. Energy is conserved, so whatever happens, the total released energy is just the initial energy of the collision partners (which is tiny in our macroscopic world).
• If you collide heavy ions with heavy ions at high energy, you get a very small, very hot collision region for a very short time. This region has conditions similar to those we had shortly after the big bang, and it allows us to study them today. The collision produces thousands of new particles that fly towards the detectors. Again, the total energy is given by the initial energy of the ions, and tiny (about 0.0001 J at the LHC).
• Hypothetical: If you have some larger clump of antimatter, it would make a good bomb. Releasing this antimatter leads to a reaction with matter, converting all the antimatter and an equivalent amount of matter to radiation and heat. This conversion releases a huge amount of energy - even 1 gram of antimatter would give an explosion similar to the Hiroshima bomb.

There is no large clump of antimatter. If you would have all the antimatter that has been produced in labs in the last decades at once, it would just be enough to make hot coffee.

 

[ChrisVer]

Kaku and in general any physicist, who go and give brief talks within documentaries, are able to say whatever they like and it shouldn't be taken seriously.
Of course this is not a problem of the scientists themselves, but of the documentaries they participate... they want to give "big impressions" to the crowd, although what they say is impractical ... antimatter for example is an ideal source of energy, however technically it is not practical...the documentaries will focus on the first and will just give a small-note mention on the second...As a result the idea that the movie will pass, will be too extreme to be real...
The Big Bang thepry has within the reactions of matter and antimatter, but the quantities were extremely large.

Another factor that makes things worse, is that of over-simplification for topics way too complicated to be understood... That is a pop-science feature in general (and as far as I remember, Kaku has written pop-science literature)...Of course I am not involved in his research topic, so I don't try to judge him for his work (as a scientist he could as well be a very good one)... However, I'm gladly judging him for his public appearences and I find them uninteresting to misleading...