I Higgs Field & GR: Are They Related or Not?

[Dennis Plews]

TL;DR Summary

Higgs Field and GR

Since these two pillars of science have mass as a common core, are they related, essentially the same or not?

 

[PeterDonis]

these two pillars of science have mass as a common core

What do you mean by that?

 

[PeterDonis]

Moderator's note: Thread title edited.

 

[Vanadium 50]

I don't know what you mean by that either, but I am pretty sure the answer is "no".

 

[malawi_glenn]

No they are not the same

 

[Demystifier]

It's clear what the OP meant; "Higgs field creates mass" and "mass creates gravity", so there could be a relation between Higgs and gravity. Of course, both claims in quotation marks originate from oversimplified and misleading explanations in pop-sci literature. Neither claim is really true, and there is no relation.

 

[PeterDonis]

It's clear what the OP meant

Maybe it seems that way to you, but the person who should be clarifying and explaining what the OP meant is the OP. @Dennis Plews please clarify what you meant, as has already been requested. Otherwise this thread will be deleted.

 

[Dennis Plews]

What do you mean by that?

To use a famous quote: “Matter tells spacetime how to curve and spacetime tells matter how to move.” Here I am converting Prof Wheeler’s “matter” to what I consider to be a fair substitute, mass. Mass is now understood to be field excitations that have a positive coupling constant with the Higgs field and thus acquire the property know as mass. Hence it seems fair to inquire of experts if such Higgs couplings are causally related to GR.

 

[PeterDonis]

“Matter tells spacetime how to curve and spacetime tells matter how to move.”

Ok so far. But:

Here I am converting Prof Wheeler’s “matter” to what I consider to be a fair substitute, mass.

This is not correct. What "matter" actually means, when you unpack what GR actually says, is "stress-energy". Rest mass is only part of stress-energy, and things that have zero rest mass, like EM radiation, still have stress-energy and are still a source of spacetime curvature (and of course also still get told by spacetime how to move).

Mass is now understood to be field excitations that have a positive coupling constant with the Higgs field and thus acquire the property know as mass.

This is garbled. The Higgs mechanism is only one possible way that a quantum field can have mass. But in any case, "mass" in this case means "rest mass" (or invariant mass, which is a better term), and, as above, that is not the same thing as stress-energy.

Hence it seems fair to inquire of experts if such Higgs couplings are causally related to GR.

And the answer is no. See above and previous responses.

 

[Dennis Plews]

No they are not the same

Of course they are not the same. The question is whether they’re connected via their common core of mass. Has anyone examined this commonality to see if they are connected? The first thing that comes to my mind as a possible nexus is the stress energy tensor

 

[Nugatory]

Of course they are not the same. The question is whether they’re connected via their common core of mass. Has anyone examined this commonality to see if they are connected? The first thing that comes to my mind as a possible nexus is the stress energy tensor

OK, it appears that @Demystifier did indeed understand your question properly when he answered it in post #6 above. I don’t think we can much improve on his answer there.

 

[PeterDonis]

Of course they are not the same. The question is whether they’re connected via their common core of mass. Has anyone examined this commonality to see if they are connected? The first thing that comes to my mind as a possible nexus is the stress energy tensor

See my post #9, which already addressed this (wrong) "possible nexus".

 

[Dennis Plews]

Maybe it seems that way to you, but the person who should be clarifying and explaining what the OP meant is the OP. @Dennis Plews please clarify what you meant, as has already been requested. Otherwise this thread will be deleted.

This is what I was asking:
[ATTACH type="full" alt="Demystifier"]339725[/ATTACH]

Demystifier​

It's clear what the OP meant; "Higgs field creates mass" and "mass creates gravity", so there could be a relation between Higgs and gravity. Of course, both claims in quotation marks originate from oversimplified and misleading explanations in pop-sci literature. Neither claim is really true, and there is no relation.

 

[PeterDonis]

This is what I was asking

Your link is to Demystifier's PF user page, which contains nothing relevant to this discussion.

 

[Dennis Plews]

What do you mean by that?

“Mass tells space how to curve…”( Wheelerv as I recall)is a core aspect of GR. Higgs fi coupling creates mass. Ergo, is the Higgs interaction a core aspect of GR?

 

[PeterDonis]

“Mass tells space how to curve…”

I believe Wheeler said "matter", not "mass". But in any case the precisely correct term is "stress-energy". The stress-energy tensor is the source of spacetime curvature in GR. This was already said in an earlier post.

Higgs fi coupling creates mass.

It creates rest mass, in the sense that after electroweak symmetry breaking, fields that were massless before the symmetry breaking gain mass through their interaction with the Higgs field, because that field gains a nonzero vacuum expectation value. (This is oversimplified but it is enough for this discussion.)

Ergo, is the Higgs interaction a core aspect of GR?

No. The Higgs interaction is just one way of forming one particular kind of stress-energy. It has nothing to do with how stress-energy is the source of spacetime curvature. This was also already said in an earlier post.

 

[PeterDonis]

The same answer to the OP question has now been given multiple times. It isn't going to change. Thread closed.