If the Higgs is 'responsible' for the mass

[InsertName]

If the Higgs is responsible for the mass in the universe, but the Higgs itself has mass, then isn't that a little weird?

It kind of has 'god' undertones in that sense. Is that actually why it's called (by some people) 'the God particle'?

Thanks.

 

[Pengwuino]

I don't totally see what the issue is. Most force carrying particles, if I recall, actually carry their own "charge". The photon being chargeless is actually a rare occurrence. Gluons, the mediators of the strong nuclear force, carry the charge they're trying to mediate.

 

[Bill_K]

InsertName, In the first place, when you say "The Higgs", you're conflating two separate concepts, the Higgs field and the Higgs boson. The Higgs field, a uniform scalar field supposed to permeate the vacuum is connected with the mass of the leptons, quarks and weak bosons. Connected with, not responsible for. The vacuum expectation value of the Higgs field, designated v = 246 GeV, sets the scale for those masses. But no one knows what is actually responsible for the masses. Whatever it is, it's something above and beyond the Higgs theory. That 'something' determines, for example, that the muon mass is 206 times the electron mass, and so on.

The Higgs boson is a particle excitation of the Higgs field. Its mass m_H is totally independent of v. Both v and m_H are aspects of the Higgs potential, which again is something not explained by the theory.

 

[InsertName]

Oh, I see. Thanks for clearing things up, it makes much more sense now!

I know that might sound sarcastic but it's not.

 

[Parlyne]

InsertName, In the first place, when you say "The Higgs", you're conflating two separate concepts, the Higgs field and the Higgs boson. The Higgs field, a uniform scalar field supposed to permeate the vacuum is connected with the mass of the leptons, quarks and weak bosons. Connected with, not responsible for. The vacuum expectation value of the Higgs field, designated v = 246 GeV, sets the scale for those masses. But no one knows what is actually responsible for the masses. Whatever it is, it's something above and beyond the Higgs theory. That 'something' determines, for example, that the muon mass is 206 times the electron mass, and so on.

I'm going to take issue with a couple of things here. First, I would say that the Higgs field is responsible for the masses of the other particles in the sense that the particle masses really very much are interactions between the (otherwise massless) other particles and the Higgs vacuum. While the strengths of these interactions are not set by any underlying physics we currently know of, it is the non-zero vacuum value of the Higgs field that causes (through these interactions) the other particles to have mass.

But, that's just a minor quibble of interpretation. My second issue is significantly more substantive. It is outright false to say that no one know what is responsible for the weak boson masses. Those masses are determined (at tree level, at least) by nothing more than the Higgs vev and the gauge couplings - the same gauge couplings that determine the strengths of the EM and weak forces. In fact, what made people take the GSW theory of the weak force so seriously was the prediction of the Z boson and its subsequent discovery at the predicted mass.

 

[cello]

If the Higgs is responsible for the mass in the universe, but the Higgs itself has mass, then isn't that a little weird?

It kind of has 'god' undertones in that sense. Is that actually why it's called (by some people) 'the God particle'?

Thanks.

The reason we call the Higgs God particle is that it's everywhere, but has not been experimentally found yet, just like the status of God.

The Higgs is not responsible for the majority of the mass of the universe. Even if quarks are massless, we still get massive protons, neutrons and etc. The mass of the nucleon is largely govern by QCD effect, not by the mass of the quarks.