Photon vs. Z-boson - one massive, one massless, mix of same things?

  • Thread starter Thread starter jeebs
  • Start date Start date
  • Tags Tags
    Massless Photon
jeebs
Messages
314
Reaction score
5
Apparently before we apply the Higgs mechanism we have a set of massless bosons, the photon, the B, and the W1, W2 & W3 bosons.

I'm reading that the photon and Z boson that we are familiar with can be expressed as a combination of a mixture of some of these massless states:

\gamma = Bcos(\theta_w) + W_3sin(\theta_w)
Z^0 = -Bsin(\theta_w) + W_3cos(\theta_w)

In both cases, we have mixtures of two states that have no mass associated with them. Why is it that we produce a massive Z^0 out of this?
 
Physics news on Phys.org

Thread 'Toponium Discovered'

Toponium is a hadron which is the bound state of a valance top quark and a valance antitop quark. Oversimplified presentations often state that top quarks don't form hadrons, because they decay to bottom quarks extremely rapidly after they are created, leaving no time to form a hadron. And, the vast majority of the time, this is true. But, the lifetime of a top quark is only an average lifetime. Sometimes it decays faster and sometimes it decays slower. In the highly improbable case that...
View full post »

Thread 'Dirac-Delta from Normalization of Continuous Eigenfunctions'

I'm following this paper by Kitaev on SL(2,R) representations and I'm having a problem in the normalization of the continuous eigenfunctions (eqs. (67)-(70)), which satisfy \langle f_s | f_{s'} \rangle = \int_{0}^{1} \frac{2}{(1-u)^2} f_s(u)^* f_{s'}(u) \, du. \tag{67} The singular contribution of the integral arises at the endpoint u=1 of the integral, and in the limit u \to 1, the function f_s(u) takes on the form f_s(u) \approx a_s (1-u)^{1/2 + i s} + a_s^* (1-u)^{1/2 - i s}. \tag{70}...
View full post »

Similar threads

A Branching ratios | Higgs phenomenology
Replies
13
Views
3K
A For the W3 and B bosons, what is their hypercharge and isospin?
Replies
1
Views
3K
Electroweak theory: difference between photon and Z-boson
Replies
1
Views
4K
Charge of the W bosons in the Higgs Mechanism
Replies
6
Views
3K
Why More W^+/- than Z^0 in Proton-Antiproton Collisions?
Replies
2
Views
2K
Gauge bosons and the weak mixing angle
Replies
7
Views
3K
Do all exchange bosons violate energy conservation?
Replies
2
Views
2K
Why Do W and Z Bosons Have Different Masses?
Replies
14
Views
4K
Weak interaction SU(2) gauge fields W^{1,2,3} and charge?
Replies
18
Views
2K
Polarization and helicity states
Replies
1
Views
2K

Hot Threads

Recent Insights

Back
Top