Particles moving through the higgs field

[anorred]

I'm pretty new to quantum mechanics, but I find the idea of a higgs field very interesting. I'm not sure if I understand the phenomenon correctly.

I was wondering what happens to the vectors of the field when a photon passes through a point in space. Is the potential of the field disturbed in any way? How about when a particle with mass moves though the field?

I think this question will help me understand the concept better

 

[RGevo]

Hi annored,

I will try my best qualitatively without using the standard maths.

The Higgs field, let's say this is something sitting everywhere in the universe.

If I want to see if it is there, I somehow have to interact with it. One way this can happen is an interaction with fermion fields(for example an electron). When the particle interacts, we see this interaction as a mass for the electron. But since the Higgs field is everywhere , the electron is massive everywhere!

If you see a massless particle, it means it's interaction with the Higgs field is zero.

An interesting consequence of this logic is how we make neutrinos interact with the Higgs field. We see them to have mass, so they must interact with it. We don't know how this actually happens! (Though there are some good ideas which will be tested)

 

[mfb]

Just a small addition: the higgs field is scalar. The field values are not vectors (like the magnetic field would have them for example), they are scalar values.