Tagged Questions

8
votes
0answers
144 views

“S-duality” between confinement and the Higgs mechanism?

I feel picked by the second to last sentence in this answer to a question about what would happen if EM and QCD were spontaneously broken, which says "In fact, there is a sense in theoretical ...
2
votes
0answers
129 views

Field content and symmetry groups of Minimal Composite Higgs Models

I'm trying to teach myself the Composite Higgs Model, both its theory and its LHC phenomenology (particularly the 4DCHM). Unfortunately, I'm struggling; the literature is contradictory and/or omits ...
1
vote
2answers
88 views

What is the process that gives mass to free relativitic particles?

When a free particle move in space with a known momentum and energy then what is the physical process that gives mass to that free (relativistic) particle? What is role does the Higgs field in that ...
5
votes
1answer
154 views

Why do some particles have a greater mass than others?

The property of mass that almost every particle possesses comes from the Higgs Field. It is this field, which permeates all of space, that particles interact with and hence obtain mass. But why do ...
2
votes
4answers
185 views

The building blocks of energy

I have a couple of related questions that have been bothering me for a while. They might sound unscientific, but here is goes: What are the building blocks of energy? What does energy consist of? Is ...
2
votes
0answers
121 views

Do all the particles acquire mass in the Standard Model due to the Higgs mechanism only?

I know that a mass term for an intermediate boson is not compatible with the gauge symmetry. But in principle a mass term for the electron field does not violate a gauge symmetry. However to build an ...
2
votes
0answers
55 views

In a composite Higgs, should the Z0 decay at the same rate that the neutral pion?

I am sorry to ask a question that obviously is a sum of separate questions about a process: Should the decay rate of Z0 be related to the decay of the "higgs" composite field it is eating? And, should ...
2
votes
1answer
133 views

Is this a good explanation of the Higgs mechanism? [duplicate]

Possible Duplicate: Is there an accepted analogy/conceptual aid for the Higgs field? A video I watched explains the Higgs mechanism as follows. Take massless particles. These can only ever ...
1
vote
0answers
149 views

Describing the Higgs mechanism to non-particle physicists

I'm sure I'm not the only person with this problem at the moment. I have been asked to give a public (not quite public, scientists, just not physicists) about 'this Higgs boson thing'. I am trying to ...
1
vote
1answer
196 views

What gives matter Gravitational Mass? [duplicate]

Possible Duplicate: Does the equivalence between inertial and gravitational mass imply anything about the Higgs mechanism? In Higgs mechanism, Higgs field, which likes syrup, slows down ...
5
votes
3answers
227 views

Higgs Boson: The Big Picture

First, please pardon the ignorance behind this question. I know a fair amount of math but almost no physics. I'm hoping someone can give me a brief "big picture" explanation of how physicists were ...
4
votes
0answers
117 views

Relation among anomaly, unitarity bound and renormalizability

There is something I'm not sure about that has come up in a comment to other question: Why do we not have spin greater than 2? It's a good question--- the violation of renormalizability is linked ...
1
vote
1answer
122 views

Lepton masses in the Standard Model

Some simple questions regarding leptonic masses in the Standard Model (SM): Why there is not an explicit mass term in addition to the effective mass term that arises from the Yukawa terms after ...
2
votes
1answer
170 views

How can coupling with the higgs field slow a particle down?

Quantum Diaries has an interesting introduction to the higgs. It makes it seem like the way that the higgs field gives mass to particles is via all of the interactions with virtual higgs particles. ...
9
votes
2answers
3k views

How does the Higgs mechanism work?

I'm not a particle physicist, but I did manage to get through the Feynman lectures without getting too lost. Is there a way to explain how the Higgs field works, in a way that people like me might ...
9
votes
4answers
828 views

Is there an accepted analogy/conceptual aid for the Higgs field?

Is there an accepted analogy / conceptual aid for the Higgs field? In Physics there are many accepted conceptual aids such as * Schrödinger's cat * Maxwell's Demon * I'm sure I'm missing ...
13
votes
4answers
918 views

What is the need for the Higgs mechanism and electroweak unification?

The Higgs mechanism allows massless fields to acquire mass through their coupling to a scalar field. But if the masses cannot be predicted because the couplings have to be fixed, what really is the ...