Higgs Definition and 684 Threads

In the Standard Model of particle physics, the Higgs mechanism is essential to explain the generation mechanism of the property "mass" for gauge bosons. Without the Higgs mechanism, all bosons (one of the two classes of particles, the other being fermions) would be considered massless, but measurements show that the W+, W−, and Z0 bosons actually have relatively large masses of around 80 GeV/c2. The Higgs field resolves this conundrum. The simplest description of the mechanism adds a quantum field (the Higgs field) that permeates all space to the Standard Model. Below some extremely high temperature, the field causes spontaneous symmetry breaking during interactions. The breaking of symmetry triggers the Higgs mechanism, causing the bosons it interacts with to have mass. In the Standard Model, the phrase "Higgs mechanism" refers specifically to the generation of masses for the W±, and Z weak gauge bosons through electroweak symmetry breaking. The Large Hadron Collider at CERN announced results consistent with the Higgs particle on 14 March 2013, making it extremely likely that the field, or one like it, exists, and explaining how the Higgs mechanism takes place in nature.
The mechanism was proposed in 1962 by Philip Warren Anderson, following work in the late 1950s on symmetry breaking in superconductivity and a 1960 paper by Yoichiro Nambu that discussed its application within particle physics.
A theory able to finally explain mass generation without "breaking" gauge theory was published almost simultaneously by three independent groups in 1964: by Robert Brout and François Englert; by Peter Higgs; and by Gerald Guralnik, C. R. Hagen, and Tom Kibble. The Higgs mechanism is therefore also called the Brout–Englert–Higgs mechanism, or Englert–Brout–Higgs–Guralnik–Hagen–Kibble mechanism, Anderson–Higgs mechanism, Anderson–Higgs–Kibble mechanism, Higgs–Kibble mechanism by Abdus Salam and ABEGHHK'tH mechanism (for Anderson, Brout, Englert, Guralnik, Hagen, Higgs, Kibble, and 't Hooft) by Peter Higgs. The Higgs mechanism in electrodynamics was also discovered independently by Eberly and Reiss in reverse
as the "gauge" Dirac field mass gain due to the artificially displaced electromagnetic field as a Higgs field.On 8 October 2013, following the discovery at CERN's Large Hadron Collider of a new particle that appeared to be the long-sought Higgs boson predicted by the theory, it was announced that Peter Higgs and François Englert had been awarded the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics.

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  1. I

    If the Higgs is 'responsible' for the mass

    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.
  2. P

    How many inverse femtobarns at 7 TeV to find Higgs?

    If the Higgs mass is around 115 GeV, how many inverse femtobarns at 7 TeV are needed to find the Higgs?
  3. T

    Implications of Higgs Particle on Physics

    Could someone please summarize what are the implications to Physics if the Higgs particle is 1. Discovered roughly as predicted. 2. Not detected at CERN at these energy levels. 3. Never detected. Would I be correct in saying that the Higgs particle is a predicted particle in the...
  4. S

    Discovery of Higgs: Does this mean anything to String theory?

    Hi PF Does the discovery of the Higgs Boson mean anything to string theory ? Does it falscify or verify the theory, or is it completely irrelavant for the theory? \Schreiber
  5. R

    Technicolor: quark-like particles inside Higgs?

    Lee Smolin mentioned in "Trouble with Physics": "The next-most-elegant hypothesis is that the Higgs boson is made up of a new kind of quark, different from those that make up protons and neutrons. Because this seemed at first a "technical" solution to the problem, these were called...
  6. L

    Top and W radiative corrections and the Higgs Mass

    I'm trying to understand the attached plot giving limits on the Higgs Mass based on radiative corrections to the Top and W mass. I know the general idea that both mass corrections depend on the Higgs mass, therefore knowing the mass of the two particles limits the range of the Higgs mass, but...
  7. R

    Exploring the Existence of the Higgs Field: Beliefs and Debates

    I'm wondering who out there believes a Higgs field exists, and why you do/don't believe that? It seems like an aether theory to me...
  8. J

    Higgs mass from electroweak measurements

    I've seen the value 129^{+74}_{-49} GeV/c^2 mentioned in some discussion and wikipedia as a prediction of the higgs mass from electroweak measurements. Are the largest contributions to the error bars statistical in nature, and is is likely that the LHC can greatly increase precision of this...
  9. P

    Higgs Field/Particle: Evidence for Theory?

    I must admit, whilst I can accept the physics of the "energy well" for a Higgs field, and its implications for limiting light and gravity etc. but overall, I find it rather too 'contrived'. Are there any actual experimental results or evidence to support the theory that aren't typically...
  10. nomadreid

    Higgs primer for someone without field theory

    Could I get a rough explanation of the following? I know I would need a whole course in field theory to understand a proper explanation of the following, but could someone give me rough answers to what certainly are naïve questions? First, the Higgs particles are supposed to produce the masses...
  11. R

    Are extra-dimensions a possible explanation for electroweak symmetry breaking?

    Higgs field is proposed because the brute force inclusion of masses into the wave equation of say the W and Z force-field quanta destroys the underlying Lie group gauge symmetry. What if the Large Hadron Collider can't find the Higgs Boson. What are the alternatives to Higgs field that...
  12. T

    Searching for LHC News - Has Higgs Been Found?

    Is there any LHC News Well the LHC has been running at 7TeV for 6 months now and everything seems very quite, is it still too early to hear of discoveries? I have searched the LHC site and the web but there nothing out there. I presume that Higgs has not been found?
  13. E

    Suppose gravitons and Higgs were quasiparticles like phonons

    It's well known that gravitons expressed in QFT is perturbatively non-renormalizable at high energies. Higgs bosons suffers from quadratic radiative corrections. Recently Verlinde proposed gravity is the result of entropy. This has led researches to speculate on the microscopic structure of...
  14. J

    Black Holes: growth affected by Higgs or Dark energy/matter

    I am curious to what extent black hole growth can be used to probe understanding of various particles/fields. 1] Dark matter: Let's consider dark matter to be so weakly interacting we can model it as a perfectly non-interacting gas. For even more simplification, let's assume dark matter...
  15. T

    WW Fusion in Higgs Production: Is it Possible in the Lab Frame?

    e^- + e^+\rightarrow\overline{\nu}_e + \nu_e + H Can it possible for this process happen in lab frame? i.e. the positron is accelerated to collide with the electron target.
  16. arivero

    If susy were unbroken, should we need a higgs?

    reading the light-heart book of Aitchison, "an informal intro...", we see that the problem with mass terms in the electroweak bosons is not that they spoil gauge invariance, but that they spoil gauge invariance in a way that it is not recovered when their mass goes to zero. After one has been...
  17. E

    Electroweak symmetry breaking without Higgs boson?

    I saw this paper listed, http://arxiv.org/abs/1012.5529 Asymptotically safe weak interactions Xavier Calmet (Submitted on 26 Dec 2010) "We emphasize that the electroweak interactions without a Higgs boson are very similar to quantum general relativity. The Higgs field could just be a...
  18. S

    The Higgs vev, the Higgs Mass, and WW-scattering

    First of all, thank you to those who have helped me with questions; its been helpful and this forum is proving to be a useful learning device. This time, I'm just looking for some clarification. From what I understand, the 'Hierarchy Problem' lies in the self-energy corrections to the Higgs...
  19. D

    Gauge Boson: Higgs vs Graviton

    Forgive my lack of particle physics undestanding, I'm still trying to teach myself! I've been looking into gauge bosons and I'm trying to distinguish between the Higgs and the graviton. From what I know, the Higgs is the particle postulated by the standard model to give all others mass...
  20. J

    Exploring the Higgs Boson: Uncovering the Mystery

    http://www.higgs-boson.org/ Is it as garbage as it looks?
  21. J

    Can the effects of the higgs field be saturated?

    Velocity through an orifice follows a certain equation until the fluid approaches the speed of sound; magnetic fields obey certain equations until the magnetic material becomes 'saturated'; gasses obey the ideal gas law until the gasses atoms become too close to each other. There are many...
  22. marcus

    Can LSS unification (gravity, gauge, Higgs) be quantized à la new LQG ?

    Can LSS unification (gravity, gauge, Higgs) be quantized à la "new LQG"? This came out in April. We had it on our second quarter MIP ("most important paper") poll. https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=413838 So far, this is a classical treatment. And it uses a spacetime manifold...
  23. E

    What if the Higgs is not found by LHC and Tev, nor anything else

    Technicolor models offer ways to break EWB that do not involve higgs, but do predict new observations at LHC energies. Based on precision WW scattering, unitarity would be violated without the Higgs mechanism. So if the Higgs, or something that plays its role, is not found, unitarity is...
  24. J

    Higgs Boson and it's nickname the 'god particle'

    There was an argument in my Physics II class today over the appropriateness of 'God particle' for the Higgs Boson. I thought it would make some people perceive it incorrectly and it probably overstates the importance of its existence. Do you guys think its offensive that a deity is invoked...
  25. marcus

    SM Higgs ruled out over wide range (26 July announcement)

    "The bottom line is that CDF and D0 can now exclude (at 95% confidence level) the existence of a Standard Model Higgs particle over a fairly wide mass range in the higher mass part of the expected region: from 158 to 175 GeV. If the SM Higgs exists, it appears highly likely that it is in the...
  26. F

    Is the graviton a different particle from the higgs boson

    I was reading this book that separated the graviton from the higgs boson. Can I get some help anything works for me.
  27. FeDeX_LaTeX

    What Would Happen Without the Higgs Boson?

    Hello; I was just wondering what would happen if the Higgs boson particle did exist or did not exist. If we conclude that it does not exist, what would happen to the standard model of particle physics, and the equation that describes how particles interact with each other? Because if the...
  28. rhody

    Eurostar: Search for: Higgs in ATLAS Experiment

    Eurostar: Accepted approach in search of the Higgs, applies to ATLAS: The physicists: Five videos so far, more to come, subscribe here: http://www.collidingparticles.com/subscribe/index.html" for new releases. http://www.collidingparticles.com/episode01.html"...
  29. srfriggen

    Higgs field and the casimir effect

    Would/should the mass of a particle measured between the two plates (typical casimir experiment setup) be different than measured outside the plates? If so would this be evidence of the Higgs field/mechanism?
  30. P

    Higgs field issues of detection?

    my view. The current theory of the higgs field is based on the higgs boson. Now a boson, in theory has to conform to the rules of super-fluidity or a Bose-Einstein Cond. I can confer because of this, All higgs bosons, would be interlocked as a field acting as one particle. I can say that since...
  31. MTd2

    Unification of gravity, gauge fields, and Higgs bosons

    http://arxiv.org/abs/1004.4866 Unification of gravity, gauge fields, and Higgs bosons A. Garrett Lisi, Lee Smolin, Simone Speziale (Submitted on 27 Apr 2010) We consider a diffeomorphism invariant theory of a gauge field valued in a Lie algebra that breaks spontaneously to the direct sum...
  32. inflector

    How Do Glue and the Higgs Mechanism Contribute to Particle Mass?

    I'm trying my best to learn particle physics and cosmology for the last year or so. One of the concepts I'm trying to understand is how the 95% figure humanino quotes above is arrived at. I've seen this figure (or something close to it) a few times here. I read the paper...
  33. Char. Limit

    Higgs Boson Discovery Proves Standard Model: Exciting News from LHC

    You'll never believe it, but physicists at the LHC have discovered the Higgs Boson! It has the expected properties, and many physicists say that this proves once and for all the Standard Model. "This truly is a momentous discovery," Steven Chu, Secretary of Energy for the U.S. said. "Now our...
  34. K

    Why hasn't the Higgs boson been detected?

    My question is (and it's probably stupid, I'm a layman, please have patience with me): It seems from what I've read that the Higgs boson, if it exists, is very unlikely to have an extremely high mass (above ~500 GeV), and probably has a mass under ~145 GeV. And I know the top quark with a mass...
  35. edpell

    What is the Higgs particle and what does it do for us?

    What is the Higgs particle and what does it do for us? How will LHC detect it? What is the signature? Thanks.
  36. M

    Exploring the Connection Between the Higgs Field, Gravity, and Time

    If the proposed Higgs field is a mechanism which "decelerates" certain particles (whereas not interacting with others), thus creating mass as we know it, would it follow from this that the field is also, ultimately, the source of gravity? If so, there seems to be a connection between gravity and...
  37. C

    When does the LHC find out if higgs boson exist?

    when is the LHC find out if higgs boson excist?
  38. B

    Is the Higgs Boson Necessary if Lorentz-Fitzgerald Accounts for Mass Increase?

    sqrt(1-v2/c2) About matter and mass... I've been thinking that if the Lorentz-Fitzgerald contraction equation can accurately calculate an increase in inertial mass (without anything representing the Higgs Field), is there any need for the Higgs Boson? Doesn't the LF equation imply that...
  39. C

    What is the role of the Higgs boson in giving mass to particles?

    i know no one has ever seen them before there just a theory but my question is what are they? do they make up quarks to give everything mass or what I am kinds confused.
  40. D

    How Does the Higgs Field Affect Particle Speeds in Feynman Diagrams?

    I need help - Higgs for idiots: So, how a particle which have no mass without higgs (so it travels at c, and on feynman diagram we would draw its worldline at 45deg) can slow down or even be at rest when Higgs is switched on? Could anyone draw a feynman diagram?
  41. J

    Is the Higgs Vacuum Energy-Momentum Affected by Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking?

    Okay, these questions aren't completely about the Higgs, but it is a good starting point / explicit example. After spontaneous symmetry breaking occurs, such that the vacuum state itself no longer has the symmetry of the Lagrangian, will there always be something equivalent to a Higgs (a...
  42. H

    What is this H+ particle, is it related to the Higgs Bosons and is it proven?

    I am currently looking at a diagram of a top and anti top decay. The anti top decays into a weak boson and an anti bottom and the weak then decays into an electron and electron anti-neutrino. On the other side the top decays into a H+ particle and a bottom. What is this H+ particle, is it...
  43. T

    Unparticle Physics and Higgs Sector

    Hi! That's my first thread and I apologize for my bad English, but there's a question in my mind that makes me crazy... At the moment I'm working on Unparticle Physics especially on the coupling between the SM Higgs sector and the unparticle sector. There is a paper by Fox, Rajaraman...
  44. rhody

    Who Deserves Credit for Predicting the Higgs Particle?

    I have a habit of comparing author's descriptions and credits for significant theories or predictions in particle physics, especially when they involve two Nobel Prize winners. I hold them to a higher standard than most. That being said, in reading Lee Smolin's book , "Trouble with...
  45. R

    Exploring the Four Degrees of Freedom of the Higgs Field

    Hi, I'm doing an essay on the Higgs boson and I'm confused about what the "four degrees of freedom" of the Higgs field are. I know that the W and Z bosons become massive by absorbing 3 of the degrees of freedom and the remaining one becomes the Higgs boson but I don't really understand what...
  46. J

    Higgs Field and Fluid Dynamics

    Can fluid dynamics be applied to a particle moving through a Higgs field? Like is there a wake, or even a slipstream in which a trailing particle might be affected less by the Higgs field or not at all?
  47. edpell

    Higgs and Lattice calculations

    My understanding is that the folks who do particle mass calculations using the formalism of a lattice get results that fit measured values well without using a Higgs field. Is this correct? If so, do we have any use for and/or reason to believe in the Higgs field/particle?
  48. R

    Can Einstein's theory explain the search for the Higgs Boson at LHC?

    As a layman, I'm having a problem with understanding the search at LHC for the Higgs Boson. As I understand Einstein, all mass is nothing but energy. In that case, why are we looking for a particle which imbues mass? For example, in Rutherford's experiment, at least in my mind's eye, when...
  49. inflector

    Complexity, The Standard Model and Higgs

    I've been reading most of the threads here in particle physics forum. Recently, I noted a couple of threads started by enotstrebor which were a bit impolitic. Nevertheless, they raised some issues which are similar to those I have myself with the Standard Model as well Quantum Mechanics in...
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