What is the electric charge of Higgs particle?

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Discussion Overview

The discussion centers around the electric charge of the Higgs particle, exploring its properties within the context of the Standard Model and alternative models. Participants examine the implications of the Higgs field's representation in the SU(2) gauge theory, the nature of charged and neutral Higgs bosons, and the theoretical framework surrounding these particles.

Discussion Character

  • Exploratory
  • Technical explanation
  • Debate/contested
  • Mathematical reasoning

Main Points Raised

  • One participant questions the necessity of assigning a positive charge to the H+ component of the Higgs doublet, suggesting that the choice of hypercharge Y=1 leads to H+ having +1e charge and H0 being neutral.
  • Another participant clarifies that the Standard Model Higgs particle is neutral, while other models may predict charged Higgs bosons.
  • A further reply discusses the representation of the Higgs field as a complex SU(2) doublet, noting that the choice of components is a matter of convention and does not affect the underlying physics.
  • One participant elaborates on the degrees of freedom in the Higgs field, indicating that the physical Higgs boson emerges after symmetry breaking and the "eating" of the other components by the W and Z bosons.
  • Another participant introduces 't Hooft's Rξ gauges and discusses the implications for renormalizability and the observable particle content, emphasizing the existence of one Higgs boson in the minimal Higgs sector.
  • There is mention of the ongoing debate regarding whether the discovered "Higgs-like particle" corresponds to the minimal Higgs sector or if additional Higgs bosons exist.

Areas of Agreement / Disagreement

Participants express differing views on the nature of the Higgs particle, particularly regarding its charge and the implications of various theoretical frameworks. No consensus is reached on whether the discovered particle aligns with the minimal Higgs sector or if there are additional Higgs bosons in nature.

Contextual Notes

The discussion involves complex theoretical concepts, including the representation of fields in gauge theories, symmetry breaking, and the implications of different gauge choices. Some assumptions and definitions remain unspecified, and mathematical steps are not fully resolved.

nguyendung
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What is the electric charge of Higgs particle?Then if it is charge particle why must we give that particle the charge?

In GWS model we introduce a scalar field in the spinor representation of SU(2):(H^+,H^0) .Then why must we choose positive charge for H^+?

Now,I think that Q=T^3+Y/2,and we choose Y=1 so that H^+ has +1e and H^0 has 0e?

So Higgs particle is neutral particle?
 
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Which Higgs particle do you mean? The standard model particle clearly has no electric charge, other models predict charged Higgs bosons in addition.

Every positively charged particle also has a negatively charged antiparticle.
 
To expand a bit on mfb's reply: The scalar field that you introduce is a complex SU(2) doublet and you can introduce it as it is generally introduced or as the complex conjugate of how it is generally introduced. This is essentially just bookkeeping and will result in the same physics, you could just as well have chosen a doublet with a negative component and a neutral component, it is just a matter of what you are choosing to call different things.

As the Higgs field acquires a vev and EW symmetry is broken, the two components of the charged field are eaten by the W bosons and the imaginary part of the neutral component is eaten by the Z boson. You are left with one real scalar field, which is the Higgs boson, which has charge zero.
 
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None of these H+ or H0 are the Higgs particles... Because both of these are complex fields... In particular both of them together have 4 degrees of freedom:
[itex]H^+ = Re [H^+] + i Im[H^+][/itex]
[itex]H^0 = Re [H^0] + i Im[H^0][/itex]
So 4 fields...

The Higgs is just one of these components- the other 3 are "eaten" by Ws and Zs... In particular you can do that, in an introductory level, by rotating out the Higgs field and making those unphysical degrees of freedom vanish...
However if anyone has any reference for how this is done in a Path Integral formalism, I'd be happy to see it :)
What happens is that one of these components gets a non-vanishing vev, and Higgs physical field is said to be the perturbations around that vev:
[itex]H_{phys} (x)= <H> + h(x)[/itex]
 
The clever way to do this are 't Hooft's ##R_{\xi}## gauges. You use the usual Faddeev-Popov path-integral formalism. You can go to the unitary gauge as the limit ##\xi \rightarrow \infty##. The point is that the proper vertex functions are renormalizable only for finite ##\xi##. So if you want to do loop calculations you should use a finite ##\xi##. The S-matrix elements of physical processes are gauge invariant and thus independent of ##\xi##. This shows that the particle content is as given in the unitary gauge, particularly there are no would-be Goldstone bosons as observable particles left but only one Higgs boson.

A great book, explaining this very well, is

J. C. Taylor, Gauge Theories of Weak Interactions, Cambridge University Press (1976)

It's one Higgs boson in the usual formulation of the standard model with a minimal Higgs sector; you can invent more sophisticated Higgs fields, where you have more then one kind of Higgs boson left, and it's an interesting question, if the "Higgs like particle" declared as discovered on July 4, 2012 is the one described with the minimal Higgs sector or whether there are more Higgs bosons in nature or whatever it is what's behind the "Higgs mechanism".
 

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